OBERLIX  PERFECTIONISM 


V 


ARTICLE  OXK 


B.  B.  WARFIELD 


Reprinted  from 
The  Princeton  Theological  Review,  Vol.  XIX,  No.   i,  January,  19; 


408 


FROM    THE    LIBRARY   OF 


REV.    LOUIS    FITZGERALD    BENSON.   D.  D 


BEQUEATHED    BY    HIM   TO 


THE    LIBRARY    OF 


PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 


The  Princeton 
Theological  Review 

JANUARY,  1921 


OBERLIN  PERFECTIONISM 
I.    The  Men  and  the  Beginnings. 

Oberlin  College1  had  its  origin  in  what  seemed  a  wild 
dream  that  formed  itself  in  1832  in  the  mind  of  John  J. 
Shipherd,  home-missionary  pastor  of  the  little  Presbyterian 
church  in  the  village  of  Elyria,  Ohio.  As  the  scheme  floated 
before  his  imagination,  it  was  perhaps  not  very  dissimilar  to 
one  of  those  communistic  enterprises  which  were  springing 
up  throughout  the  country  in  the  wake  of  the  excitement 
aroused  by  Robert  Owen.  To  that  extent  Shipherd  may  be 
accounted  a  brother  spirit  to  John  H.  Noyes.  But  he  had 
not  the  courage  of  conviction,  to  call  it  by  no  harsher  name, 
which  drove  Xoyes  on  in  his  reckless  course.  When  he 
came  to  draw  up  the  Oberlin  "Covenant,"  he  faltered.  He 
provided  only  that  "we  will  hold  and  manage  our  estates 
personally,  but  pledge  as  perfect  a  community  of  interest  as 
though  we  held  a  community  of  property."  By  so  narrow 
a  margin  Oberlin  appears  to  have  escaped  becoming  a  decent 
Oneida  Community :  or  rather,  we  should  say,  by  so  narrow 
a  margin  Oberlin  appears  to  have  escaped  the  early  end 
which  has  befallen  all  communistic  enterprises  which  wish 
to  be  decent;  for  communism  and  decency  cannot  exist  to- 
gether.2 

Apart  from  this  one  point,  the  persistency  of  Shipherd's 


1  Compare :  J.  H.  Fairchild,  Oberlin,  Its  Origin,  Progress  and  Re- 
sults, 1871,  and  Oberlin,  the  Colony  and  the  College,  1883;  W.  G. 
Ballantyne,  Oberlin  Jubilee,  1S33-1883,  1884;  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story 
of  Oberlin,  1898. 

2  Cf.  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story  of  Oberlin,  1898,  pp.  87  ff.  for  some 
account  of  Shipherd's  communistic  leaning. 


2  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

purpose  and  the  energy  of  his  will  were  incapable  of  falter- 
ing. By  the  end  of  1833,  he  had  some  nine  square  miles  of 
virgin  forest  in  hand;  the  beginnings  of  a  colony  already 
settled  on  it,  pledged  to  high  thinking  and  hard  living  (not 
only  no  alcohol  or  tobacco,  but  also  no  coffee,  no  tea,  no 
condiments);  a  large  boarding-school  building  erected; 
efficient  teachers  at  work  in  it,  and  a  body  of  pupils,  which 
numbered  forty-four  by  the  end  of  the  session,  gathered  at 
their  feet.  There  was  of  course  only  an  "Academy"  at  first. 
But  Shipherd's  plan  embraced  also  from  the  beginning  a 
"College"  and  a  "Theological  Seminary" ;  and  already  early 
in  1834,  there  was  a  Board  of  Trustees  in  being,  operating 
under  a  charter,  couched  in  broad  terms,  which  spoke  of  an 
"Oberlin  Collegiate  Institute."  And  by  the  autumn  of  that 
year  there  was  a  freshman  class  ready  to  enter  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  next  session  (in  the  spring)  "the  collegiate  de- 
partment" of  this  Institute.  Summer  was  term-time  at 
Oberlin,  winter  vacation.  Late  in  November,  accordingly, 
Shipherd  started  out,  armed  with  a  commission  from  the 
Board  of  Trustees  to  obtain  the  means  to  make  the  step 
forward  now  become  necessary.  What  he  sought  was 
money  and  a  President.  But  like  Saul,  seeking  the  asses, 
he  found  much  that  he  was  not  looking  for.  He  found  a 
whole  Theological  Seminary, — President,  professors,  pupils 
and  endowment — all  complete;  and  he  brought  it  all  back 
with  him  to  Oberlin  in  the  spring  of  1835. 

Shipherd  always  contended  that  he  was  supernaturally 
guided  in  this  quest.  And  Asa  Mahan,  the  President  whom 
he  found,  fully  agreed  with  him.  Up  to  the  end  of  his  long 
life,  Mahan  constantly  insisted  that  he  was  supernaturally 
called  to  the  Presidency  of  Oberlin  College,  not  in  the  pro- 
vidential sense  in  which  this  phrase  is  ordinarily  employed, 
but  with  as  immediate  a  supernaturalism  as  that  with  which 
Saul  or  David  was  designated  king  over  Israel.3  Shipherd, 
having  money  and  a  President  to  find,  naturally  should  have 
gone  east  where  money  and   Presidents  were  to  be  found. 


3Cf.  Asa  Mahan.  Autobiography,  1881,  p.  190. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  3 

But  he  discovered  himself  going  south  instead.  "An  irre- 
sistible impression"  drove  him  without  any  clear  intelligence 
justifying  his  action,  in  the  wrong  direction.  So  he  reached 
Cincinnati  instead  of  New  York,  and  found — Mahan ;  who, 
everybody  in  Cincinnati  told  him,  was  the  very  person  he 
was  seeking.  He  thought  so  too;  and  with  the  more  con- 
fidence that  he  could  see  now  that  he  had  been  divinely 
guided  to  him.  Mahan  had  a  whole  Theological  Seminary 
ready  for  removal  to  Oberlin.  There  had  been  an  aboli- 
tionist organization  among  the  students  of  Lane  Theological 
Seminary,  which  the  Trustees  of  that  Institution  had  en- 
deavored to  suppress.  The  result  was  that  the  students  had 
withdrawn  from  the  Seminary,  practically  in  a  body;  and, 
housed  near  by,  were  endeavoring  to  continue  their  theo- 
logical education  independently,  with  only  the  aid  of  John 
Morgan,  who  had  been  tutor  in  the  preparatory  department 
at  Lane  and  had  withdrawn  with  the  students.  Mahan  had 
been  the  single  member  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  who  had 
taken  the  students'  part;  and  he  now  proposed  that  they, 
with  Morgan,  should  go  with  him  to  Oberlin,  thus  com- 
pleting at  a  stroke  the  three-storied  structure  proposed  for 
that  institution. 

Excited  by  these  bewildering  occurrences,  Shipherd,  tak- 
ing Mahan  with  him,  proceeded  east  to  complete  his  mission. 
He  now,  however,  no  longer  sought  money  and  a  President, 
but  money  and  a  Professor  of  Theology.  The  office  was 
offered  on  the  way  to  Theodore  G.  Weld,  the  young  aboli- 
tionist agitator,  who  had  had  much  to  do  with  the  students' 
revolt  at  Lane  and  who  was  their  idol.  He  pointed  them 
rather  to  Charles  G.  Finney;  and  to  Finney,  then  pastor 
of  the  Broadway  Tabernacle  Congregationalist  Church, 
New  York,  accordingly  they  went.  They  found  him  de- 
pressed in  body  and  spirit,  with  a  feeling  that  the  bow  of 
his  strength  was  broken  and  his  evangelistic  days  were 
over;4  and  quite  ready  to  listen  to  their  proposal  if  only  the 

*  Preface  to  his  Sermons  on  Important  Subjects   (1834)    1836,  p.  iv : 
"My  health  has  been  such  as  to  render  it  probable  that  I  shall  never 


4  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

necessary  financial  provision  could  be  made.  This  was  man- 
aged with  the  help  of  his  friend,  Arthur  Tappan,  who  was 
always  ready  to  multiply  good  works.  One  condition,  how- 
ever, was  made  by  all — Tappan  and  Finney  and  Mahan  and 
the  Lane  students  alike.  There  was  to  be  no  color  line 
drawn  at  Oberlin.  The  whole  enterprise  was  near  to  wreck- 
ing on  this  condition.  It  was  only  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty and  in  the  end  by  a  majority  of  only  one  vote,  and 
that  on  an  ambiguously  worded  resolution,  that  the  Trustees 
were  brought  to  comply  with  it.  It  was  however  thus  com- 
plied with;  and  so  Shipherd  was  able  to  bring  his  Theo- 
logical Seminary  to  Oberlin  in  the  spring  of  1835. 

The  end  of  woes,  however,  was  not  yet.  The  New  York 
backers  of  the  enterprise  failed ;  and  it  found  itself  plunged 
into  the  greatest  financial  straits.  The  students  who  had 
come  from  Lane  proved  a  little  difficult — some  of  them 
perhaps  quite  impossible — as  from  their  antecedents  it  was 
to  be  anticipated  they  would.5  His  colleagues  found  Mahan 
himself    something  more   than   a   little   difficult.6      Finney 

be  able  to  labor  as  an  evangelist  again."  Preface  to  his  Lectures  on 
Revivals  of  Religion  (1835),  2d  ed.  1835,  p.  iii :  "I  am  now  a  Pastor, 
and  have  not  sufficient  health  to  labor  as  an  Evangelist." 

6  When  Asa  Mahan,  Autobiography,  p.  231,  speaks  of  the  lugubrious 
tone  of  their  Christianity,  some  discount  may  properly  be  made  on 
account  of  his  natural  zeal  against  a  "miserable-sinner  Christianity." 
Though  they  were  "from  among  the  brightest  converts"  of  the  great 
revivals,  he  says,  "their  common  experience  was  represented  in  the 
words:  'Where  is  the  blessedness  I  knew,  when  first  I  saw  the  Lord?'" 
Speaking  of  their  tone  of  mind  while  still  at  Lane  (pp.  239  ff.),  he 
says :  "Several  of  the  most  talented  among  them"  refused  to  go  to 
church  saying  they  could  "derive  no  benefit  from  the  discourses  of  Dr. 
Beecher  or  any  other  pastor  in  the  city."  "They  understood  the  whole 
subject."  They  did  go  to  chapel,  "and  there  listened  to  one  of  the 
feeblest  preachers  I  ever  knew,"  and  openly  said  that  feeble  as  they 
were,  his  sermons  were  as  useful  to  them  as  any  others  in  the  city  could 
be.  "Of  those  young  men,"  he  remarks,  "every  one,  so  far  as  I  could 
learn,  afterwards  made  shipwreck  of  the  faith.  Only  one  or  two  of 
them  entered  the  ministry  at  all,  and  they  soon  left  it,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  some  of  the  absurdities  that  then  obtained." 

6  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story  of  Oberlin,  1898,  p.  40:  "Certain  faults 
and  infirmities  of  his  wrought  not  a  little  damage."  Again,  p.  211  f. : 
"His   spirit    was   radical,   positive  and  aggressive,  and  while  he   made 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  5 

bristled  with  eccentricities.7  Fads  were  exaggerated  into 
fanaticisms,  foibles  into  gospels.  There  were  some  who, 
worn  out  with  the  wrangle,  left — "in  a  very  unhappy 
frame,"  as  the  historian  says.8  Most  stayed  on,  and  rasped 
along.  Meanwhile  Finney  and  Mahan,  with  the  valuable 
assistance  of  John  Morgan  and  Henry  Cowles — who  com- 
pleted the  theological  faculty — were  preaching,  with  the 
greatest  power  and  effect,  the  duty,  the  privilege,  the  possi- 
bility of  a  holy  walk.  The  circumstances  in  which  they 
found  themselves  imposed  this  particular  topic  upon  them 
as,  in  a  very  distinct  sense,  their  peculiar  message;  and 
they  delivered  it  with  great  elaboration  and  persistency. 
As  they  pressed  on  in  their  more  and  more  intensified  ex- 
hortations, it  came  about  that  they  were  preaching  just  the 
duty  and  attainability  of  a  life  of  perfect  holiness,  though 
they  themselves  had  not  faced  the  fact. 

It  required  to  be  forced  on  their  recognition  by  pressure 
from  without.  This  came  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of 
1836  as  the  second  year  of  the  Theological  Seminary  was 
drawing  to  a  close.  Under  the  exhortations  of  their  pre- 
ceptors the  students  perceived  that  precisely  what  was  re- 
quired of  them  was  perfection.  They  put  the  question ;  and 
at  length — though  not  until  the  ensuing  winter — received 
the  affirmative  answer.  We  are  assisting  here  at  the  birth 
of  Oberlin  Perfectionism.  Once  born,  it  proved  a  very 
vigorous  and  very  exacting  child.  Its  exposition  and  de- 
many  warm  friends  and  admirers,  others  not  a  few  were  stirred  to 
disfavor  and  antagonism.  .  .  Certain  serious  defects  attended  his 
career,  which  in  particular  his  associates  in  the  faculty  found  it  in- 
creasingly difficult  to  endure.  After  long  forebearance  and  as  a  last 
resort  it  was  determined  to  draw  up  a  paper  setting  forth  the  facts  in 
the  case,  to  be  signed  by  all  and  presented  to  the  Trustees." 

7  For  example,  Leonard,  as  cited,  p.  35 :  "With  the  advent  of  Mr. 
Finney  it  began  to  be  taught  that  a  strict  Graham  diet  was  the  only 
one  either  hygienic  or  truly  Christian,  while  meat  and  all  condiments 
were  to  be  eschewed."    Compare  pp.  209  ff. 

8  Leonard,  as  cited,  pp.  35,  261,  442.  J.  P.  Cowles  is  alluded  to,  whose 
views,  we  are  told,  "were  at  some  points  so  opposed  to  those  of  his 
associates,  and  who  felt  constrained  to  speak  and  act  just  as  he  felt, 
that  his  resignation  was  requested."     He  left  Oberlin  in  1839. 


O  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

fence  absorbed  a  very  large  part  of  the  energies  of  the 
staff  of  theological  instructors.  It  was  Mahan  who  took 
the  lead  and  made  himself  first  and  last  its  chief  expounder. 
Finney,  however,  was  first  on  the  field.  Spending  the 
winter  of  1836- 1837  in  New  York,  as  was  his  custom  dur- 
ing his  early  years  at  Oberlin,  and  preaching  there  a  series 
of  Lectures  to  Professing  Christians — his  new  engross- 
ment— he  preached  two  of  them  on  "Christian  Perfection," 
the  first  public  proclamation  of  Oberlin  Perfectionism.  A 
semi-monthly  newspaper — The  Oberlin  Evangelist — the 
first  number  of  which  appeared  on  the  first  of  January, 
1839,  was  established  under  the  editorship  of  Henry 
Cowles,  for  the  main  purpose  of  propagating  the  new 
doctrine.  In  it  there  were  at  once  printed  certain  articles 
on  the  all-absorbing  topic,  out  of  which  books  by  Finney, 
Mahan  and  Cowles  were  soon  gathered  together.9  Wher- 
ever Oberlin  was  heard  of,  it  was  Oberlin  Perfectionism 
which  was  heard  of  first.10 

The  Oberlin  Professors,  we  see,  did  not  bring  perfection- 
ism to  Oberlin.  They  brought  an  ultraistic  temper11  and 
the  "New  Divinity."  And  the  "New  Divinity,"  here  too, 
as  it  had  previously  done  in  Central  and  Western  New 
York,  begot  perfectionism  out  of  its  own  loins.  Oberlin 
was  only  an  extension  of  Western  New  York  into  the  wilds 
of  Northern  Ohio,  and  it  repeated  in  its  religious  history, 
as   it  reproduced   in  its  mental   quality,  the  characteristic 


9  An  address  of  Mahan's  published  in  the  first  number,  was  utilized 
as  the  core  of  a  small  book  by  him,  called  Christian  Perfection  (early 
in  1839),  which  at  once  became  the  chief  vehicle  of  the  doctrine. 

10  Asa  Mahan,  Autobiography,  p.  261 :  "The  college  early  became, 
principally  through  its  President  and  Professor  of  Theology,  the  visible 
representative  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Higher  Life." 

11  What  was  understood  at  the  time  by  the  phrase  "religious  ultra- 
ism,"  then  very  current,  may  be  conveniently  read  in  an  admirable 
printed  sermon  of  W.  B.  Sprague's  bearing  that  title  (Albany,  1835). 
Cf.  also  D.  R.  Goodwin,  "On  Religious  Ultraism,"  in  The  Literary  and 
Theological  Review,  vol.  Ill,  1836,  pp.  56-66,  completed  by  "Radical 
Opinions,"  same  journal,  pp.  253-265. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  7 

features  of  its  stock.  John  Morgan12  and  Henry  Cowles,13 
were  not  Western  New  York  men.  But  they  had  both 
fallen  under  influences  of  the  same  general  character,  the 
one  in  contact  with  Lyman  Beecher  at  Cincinnati,  the  other 
under  the  instruction  of  N.  W.  Taylor  at  Yale;  and  had 
received  the  same  stamp.  The  situation  was  dominated  in 
any  case,  however,  by  Finney  and  Mahan,  both  Western 
New  York  men,  both  "New  Divinity"  men,  and  both  men 
of  aggressive  spirit  and  radical  temper.  Their  previous 
lives,  though  springing  out  of  the  same  soil,  had  run  on 
very  different  lines,  and  it  is  rather  remarkable  to  see  them 
converge  at  Oberlin  in  a  common  end. 

The  details  of  Finney's  early  life  which  are  current  seem 
to  rest  altogether  on  his  own  recollections.  He  does  not 
profess  that  these  were  complete,  and  there  is  some  reason 
to  suspect  that  they  were  not  always  altogether  accurate. 
The  main  facts  which  he  gives  us14  are  that  he  was  born  in 
Warren,  Litchfield  Co.,  Connecticut,  August  29,  1792;  that 
two  years  afterwards  the  family  removed  to  Brothertown, 
Oneida  Co.,  New  York;  whence,  however,  while  Finney 
was  still  so  young  a  child  that  he  retained  no  recollection 
of  it,  they  were  compelled,  by  the  settlement  of  certain  tribes 
of  Indians  there,  to  move  to  Hanover  (subsequently  re- 
named Kirkland),  then  a  part  of  the  large  township  of 
Paris,  in  the  same  county.  There  the  boy  grew  up  and  went 
to  school,  until  he  was  about  sixteen  years  of  age  (Finney 
says  he  does  not  remember  the  exact  date),  when  the  family 
moved  again, — to  Henderson,  Jefferson  Co.,  New  York,  a 


12  Born  at  Cork,  Ireland,  1802;  graduated  at  Williams  College,  1826; 
taught  at  New  York :  Preparatory  School  Teacher  at  Lane.  Cf .  Calvin 
Durfee,   Williams  Biographical  Annals,   1871,  p.  429. 

13  Born  at  Norfolk,  Connecticut,  1803 ;  graduated  at  Yale  College, 
1826,  and  Divinity  School,  1829;  pastor  for  seven  years  in  Northern 
Ohio.  Cf.  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story  of  Oberlin,  pp.  279  ff. ;  The  New 
Schaff-Herzog  Encyclopaedia,  and  Applcton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American 
Biography,  sub  nom. 

14  Memoirs  of  Rev.  Charles  G.  Finney,  written  by  Himself,  1876, 
pp.  4  ff. ;  P.  H.  Fowler,  Historical  Sketch  of  Presbyterianism  within  the 
Bounds  of  the  Synod  of  Central  New  York,  1877,  p.  258. 


8  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

hamlet  a  little  south  of  Sackett's  Harbor.  At  this  new  home 
he  taught  school  for  something  like  four  years.  Then, 
when  he  was  "about  twenty  years  old,"  or  "soon  after  he 
was  twenty  years  of  age,"  he  went  back  to  his  ancestral 
home,  Warren,  Connecticut,  and  spent  some  four  years 
there  and  in  New  Jersey,  in  study  and  teaching.  Returning 
thence  to  his  parents,  he  soon  afterward  entered  the  law- 
office  of  Benjamin  Wright  at  Adams,  New  York,  and  began 
the  study  of  law.    This,  he  says,  was  in  1818. 

It  is  a  little  difficult  to  form  a  vivid  picture  of  the  actual 
life  of  the  boy  within  this  framework.  It  was  a  raw  frontier 
life;  and  there  seem  to  have  been  few  cultural  and  no 
religious  ameliorations  afforded  him  by  his  home  associa- 
tions. There  may  be  some  reason  to  believe  that  his  father, 
like  Lyman  Beecher's,  pursued  the  trade  of  a  blacksmith;15 
and  it  is  certain  that  the  household,  like  that  in  which 
Beecher  was  bred,  was  without  church  connections.16  In- 
deed, Finney  not  only  represents  the  household  as  without 
religion,  but  broadens  out  the  representation  until  the  im- 
pression is  conveyed  that  no  "religious  privileges  were  ac- 
cessible to  him  in  the  community."  This  is  a,  perhaps  not 
unnatural,  exaggeration.  Looking  back  upon  his  youth, 
barren  of  religious  impressions,  he  transferred  to  his  sur- 
roundings much  that  belonged  only  to  himself,  and  thus 
transmuted  his  fault  into  his  misfortune.  Even  in  the 
frontier  districts  in  which  he  lived  not  only  Christian  people 
but  Christian  churches  could  be  found  by  those  who  de- 
sired to  be  associated  with  them;  and  not  only  unlettered 
itinerants  and  absurd  exhorters  but  also  learned  ministers 
and  faithful  pastors  could  be  met  with  by  those  who  sought 


16  David  W.  Bartlett,  in  the  sketch  of  Finney  in  his  Modern  Agitators, 
or  Pen-Portraits  of  Living  American  Reformers,  1855,  p.  152,  says 
that  as  a  boy  Finney  "found  considerable  time  to  wield  the  sledge  at  his 
father's  anvil,"  taking  thus  "his  first  lesson  in  moulding  the  hot  iron 
to  a  desired  shape."     His  authority  for  the  statement  is  not  given. 

10  Memoirs,  p.  4:  "My  parents  were  neither  of  them  professors  of 
religion,  and  I  believe  among  our  neighbors  there  were  very  few 
religious  people."  Compare  Lyman  Beecher's  Autobiography,  edited 
by  Charles  Beecher,  vol.  I,  p.  78. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  9 

them  out.  The  particular  region  in  which  Finney's  boy- 
hood was  spent  was  indeed  peculiarly  well  supplied  with 
opportunities  for  religious  culture.  Clinton  was  but  a  short 
two-miles  away,  and  Clinton  was  already  a  center  of  re- 
ligious influence.  There  seems  also  to  have  been  an  or- 
ganized religious  society  in  his  own  hamlet  with  so  excellent 
a  minister  as  P.  V.  Bogue  at  the  head  of  it.17  The  difficulty 
with  Finney's  early  religious  training  was  not  that  he  lacked 
opportunity  but  that  he  lacked  desire  for  it. 

Things  naturally  were  different  when  the  family  left  this 
favored  region  (about  1808)  and  made  a  new  home  for 
itself  in  the  backwoods  of  Jefferson  County.     There  was 


17  See  the  "Journal  of  the  Rev.  John  Taylor,  on  a  Mission  through 
the  Mohawk  and  Black  River  Country,  in  the  year  1802,"  printed 
in  E.  B.  O'Callaghan,  The  Documentary  History  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  vol.  II,  1850,  p.  1 1 12.  "Most  of  the  churches  in  this  part  of  the 
world  are  on  the  presbyterian  plan.  The  church  at  Clinton,  is,  how- 
ever, congregational.  Mr.  Norton  has  a  church  containing  240  mem- 
bers and  this  people  is  considered  to  be  the  most  harmonious,  regular, 
and  pious  of  any  in  the  northern  part  of  the  State  of  New  York.  In 
this  town,  or  rather  parish,  is  an  academy,  which  is  in  a  flourishing 
state.  A  Mr.  Porter,  an  excellent  character,  and  a  preacher,  is  pre- 
centor. They  have  one  usher,  and  about  60  scholars.  This  institution 
promises  fair  to  be  of  great  service  to  this  part  of  the  country.  Piety 
is  very  much  encouraged  in  it  and  some  young  gentlemen  have  become 
preachers  who  have  received  education  in  it.  There  are  in  the  town  a 
few  Universalists,  and  one  small  Baptist  church,  but  not  a  sufficient 
number  to  have  any  influence.  In  the  Society  of  Paris,  of  which 
Clinton  is  a  part,  Mr.  Steele  is  pastor;  he  is  said  to  be  a  good  and 
reputable  man — he  has  a  respectable  congregation.  In  Hanover,  a  so- 
ciety of  Paris,  Mr.  Bogue  is  Pastor."  Cf.  Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  180. 
The  church  at  Clinton  was  organized  in  1791  by  Jonathan  Edwards  the 
younger;  Asahel  Strong  Norton  was  installed  pastor  of  it  in  1793 
"and  remained  there  for  forty  years,  upheld  by  grace  and  the  support 
of  an  unwavering  faithfulness,  an  unerring  judgment,  an  unspoiled 
character,  and  a  blameless  life"  (Fowler,  p.  90).  For  a  biographical 
sketch  of  Bogue  see  Fowler,  pp.  464,  f.  After  a  successful  ministry 
at  Winchester,  Conn,  (from  1791),  he  was  employed  in  New  York 
by  the  Missionary  Society  of  Connecticut  (from  1798),  "and  then 
accepted  a  call  to  Hanover,  (now  Kirkland)  Oneida  County,  where  he 
was  equally  successful  for  a  number  of  years,  and  after  that  took 
charge  of  a  church  at  Vernon  Center."  This  appears  to  extend 
Bogue's  pastorate  at  Kirkland  through  most  of  Finney's  residence 
there. 


IO  THE    PRINCETON    THEOLOGICAL    REVIEW 

practically  no  settled  ministry  at  that  time  in  this  region;18 
and  the  young  school-teacher  passed  some  four  years  here 
without  easy  access  to  the  stated  means  of  grace.  Return- 
ing thence  to  civilization  and  religious  privileges  he  was 
able  to  sit,  however,  Sabbath  after  Sabbath,  in  the  choir- 
gallery  of  good  Peter  Starr's  church  at  Warren,  Connecti- 
cut, unmoved  to  any  spiritual  response  by  his  pastor's  faith- 
ful preaching.19  Meanwhile  changes  were  taking  place  in 
Jefferson  County.  A  revival  had  swept  through  that  region 
in  1815.20  Settled  churches  were  being  established.  A 
Presbyterian  church  at  Sackett's  Harbor  which  in  1816 
had  called  to  its  pastorate  Edward  Finley  Snowden,  a  man 
of  the  highest  quality,  was  formally  organized  in  the  early 
months  of  181 7.21  A  Congregationalist  Church,  soon  to 
become  Presbyterian,  was  organized  at  Adams.22  When 
Finney  returned  to  his  father's  house  in  181 6,  or  somewhat 
later,  it  was  no  longer  to  a  community  in  which  the  stated 
means  of  grace  were  inaccessible,  and  no  longer  to  a  house- 
hold to  which  the  grace  of  God  was  a  stranger.     A  brother 


18  Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  180:  "That  region  also  suffered  long  for  the 
want  of  means  of  grace.  A  minister  who  visited  it  in  1816,  relates : 
'To  the  north  as  far  as  the  St.  Lawrence  and  east  to  Champlain,  there 
are  probably  not  six  gospel  ministers' — an  extent  of  country  including 
the  quarter  of  the  State  of  New  York.  .  .  .  And  a  little  later,  a  mis- 
sionary writes,  'we  could  not  hear  of  any  minister  in  the  St.  Lawrence 
country,  and  there  are  very  few  on  the  Black  River.'  " 

19  Memoirs,  pp.  6f.:  G.  Frederick  Wright,  Charles  Grandison 
Finney,  1891,  p.  4. 

20  Fowler,  p.  180. 

21  For  biographical  notice  of  Snowden,  see  Fowler,  pp.  647  f.,  and 
J.  F.  Hageman,  History  of  Princeton  and  its  Institutions,  1879,  vol.  ii, 
p.  94  fT.  Cf.  W.  B.  Spraguc.  Annals,  vol.  iii,  p.  341.  He  was  dismissed 
by  the  Presbytery  of  Oneida,  to  take  charge  of  the  church  at  Sackett's 
Harbor  in  1816  but  the  formal  organization  of  the  church  did  not  take 
place  until  Feb.  17,  1817. 

22  In  the  Minutes  of  the  Presbyterian  General  Asssmbly  for  1819 
these  two  churches  stand  side  by  side  in  the  Presbytery  of  St.  Law- 
rence :  Sackett's  Harbour,  Samuel  F.  Snowden,  and  Adams  North 
Congregational  Church,  Edward  W.  Rosseter.  We  quote  from  the 
Minutes  of  1819,  since  there  are  no  statistical  tables  in  those  of  the 
immediately  preceding  years. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  II 

had  given  himself  to  God  during  his  absence.23  If  he  him- 
self still  knew  nothing  of  the  grace  of  God,  that  could  only 
be  because  he  did  not  wish  to  know  anything  of  it.  We 
are  glad  to  be  told  that  he  was  not  in  any  sense  vicious:24 
he  was,  however,  in  every  sense  godless.  It  was  not  that 
he  had  no  contact  with  religion.  If  he  had  not  a  praying 
mother,  he  had  a  praying  sweetheart  who  did  not  cease  to 
bear  him  on  her  heart  before  God  ;25  and  it  is  obvious  from 
his  own  narrative  that  he  was  repeatedly  more  or  less  af- 
fected by  the  religious  appeal.  If  he  did  not  know  God  it 
was  because  he  refused  to  have  God  in  his  knowledge.  He 
was  not  ignorant  of  Christianity;  he  was,  as  a  contemporary 
puts  it  "a  great  opposer  of  the  Church  before  his  conver- 
sion."26 Or,  as  the  historian  phrases  it,  "he  was  without 
godliness  and  with  the  spirit  of  a  sceptic  and  scoffer."27 

When  Finney,  yielding  to  the  persuasions  of  his  invalid 
mother  who  wished  him  to  remain  near  her,  gave  up  his 


23  In  his  Lectures  on  Systematic  Theoolgy,  Ed.  of  1851,  p.  429,  Fin- 
ney relates  this  incident:  "I  well  recollect,  when  far  from  home,  and 
while  an  impenitent  sinner,  I  received  a  letter  from  my  youngest 
brother,  informing  me  that  he  was  converted  to  God.  He,  if  he  was 
converted,  was,  as  I  supposed,  the  first  and  only  member  of  the 
family  who  then  had  a  hope  of  salvation.  I  was  at  the  time,  and 
both  before  and  after,  one  of  the  most  careless  of  sinners,  and  yet 
on  receiving  this  intelligence,  I  actually  wept  for  joy  and  gratitude  that 
one  of  so  prayerless  a  family  was  likely  to  be  saved." 

24  Hiram  Mead,  The  Congregational  Quarterly,  January  1877,  p.  3: 
"It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  which  he  has  not  thought  worthy  of  notice, 
that  in  spite  of  his  lack  of  religious  advantages,  he  never  became  reck- 
less or  vicious.  As  a  young  man,  he  was  spirited,  and,  no  doubt, 
sometimes  rough  and  hilarious;  but,  considering  his  associations,  he 
was  exceptionally  conscientious  and  high-minded." 

25  G.  F.  Wright,  as  cited,  p.  37,  tells  us  that  Finney's  sweetheart, 
(her  home  was  at  Whitestown,  only  a  few  miles  from  Kirkland) 
"had  been  deeply  interested  in  praying  for  Finney's  conversion  in  the 
days  of  his  impenitence." 

26  E.  H.  Snowden  in  the  Baltimore  Literary  and  Religious  Magazine, 
May  1838,  p.  236.  Snowden  (son  of  S.  F.  Snowden,  mentioned  above) 
had  been  a  pastor  at  Brownsville  where  he  says  both  Finney  and 
Burchard  had  labored — disastrously  to  the  church.  Cf.  Finney's 
Memoirs,  p.  11  iff. 

27  D.  L.  Leonard,  Story  of  Oberlin,  p.  128. 


I-'  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

purpose  of  further  pursuing  his  literary  education,  and 
entered  the  law-office  of  Benjamin  Wright  (afterwards 
Wright  and  Ward  well)  at  Adams,  in  1818  (he  was  then 
twenty-six  years  old),  he  seemed  to  have  come  to  his  own. 
He  was  peculiarly  endowed  for  the  work  of  an  advocate, 
and  we  are  not  surprised  to  learn  that  he  loved  his  pro- 
fession and  was  successful  in  its  practice  from  the  very 
first.  An  indelible  impression  was  left  upon  his  mind  by 
his  legal  studies,  and  his  habits  of  thought  and  modes  of 
public  speech  were  fixed  for  life  during  the  four  short 
years  of  his  practice  at  the  bar.  He  was  not  to  be  left, 
however,  to  the  peaceful  prosecution  of  his  chosen  profes- 
sion. He  was  already  suffering  under  a  certain  amount  of 
religious  uneasiness;  and  the  circumstances  of  his  life  in 
Adams  did  not  permit  him  to  escape  from  the  daily  appeal 
of  religion  to  him.  Religion  had  always  been  within  his 
reach — the  difference  was  only  comparative.  "Up  to  this 
time,"28  he  says,  "  I  had  never  enjoyed  what  might  be  called 
religious  privileges" :  "I  had  never  lived  in  a  praying  com- 
munity except  during  the  period  when  I  was  attending  the 
high  school  in  New  England" :  "At  Adams,  for  the  first 
time,  I  sat  statedly,  for  a  length  of  time,  under  an  educated 
ministry :"  "I  had  never,  until  this  time,  lived  where  I  could 
attend  a  stated  prayermeeting."  The  qualifications,  which 
have  been  thrown  up  to  attention  by  italicizing  them,  dej 
serve  the  most  marked  emphasis.  It  is  only  by  regarding 
them  that  we  obtain  a  view  of  the  true  state  of  the  case. 
What  happened  to  Finney  at  Adams  was  that  he  was  no 
longer  permitted  to  neglect  religion.  The  young  pastor 
of  the  Presbyterian  church  there,  George  W.  Gale,  was  a 
man  of  force  and  a  pastor  of  parts.  He  never  permitted 
this  fine  young  lawyer,  who  was  scoffing  at  religion,  but 
was  clearly  not  easy  in  his  mind  about  it,  to  escape  beyond 
its  influence.  He  made  him  leader  of  the  choir  and  so 
secured  his  constant  attendance  at  the  church.  He  was  In 
the  habit,  Finney  naively  says,  "of  dropping  in  at  our  office 
frequently  and  seemed  anxious  to  know  what  impression 

28  Memoirs,  pp.  6  ff. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  1 3 

his  sermons  had  made  on  my  mind," — apparently  not 
dreaming  that  that  was  not  vanity  on  Gale's  part,  but  good 
pastoral  work.  Finney  found  himself  going  not  merely  to 
church  but  to  prayer-meeting.  He  says  in  his  old  age  that 
he  does  not  recollect  having  ever  attended  a  prayer-meeting 
before:  and  now  he  wished  to  do  so,  partly  from  curiosity, 
and  partly  from  an  uneasiness  of  mind  on  the  subject 
which  he  could  not  well  define.29  He  got  a  Bible,  the  first 
he  had  ever  owned;  and  took  to  reading  it,  at  first  under 
cover  of  interest  in  Biblical  law,  but  soon  with  deeper  con- 
cern. He  did  not  easily  yield;  he  was  a  harsh  critic  of  his 
pastor's  sermons  and  of  the  prayers  of  Christians.  But 
Gale's  zeal  did  not  flag;  and  we  may  be  sure  he  saw  clearly 
enough  the  signs  of  the  coming  end. 

Precisely  how  the  end  came,  we  are  not  quite  sure.  Fin- 
ney tells  us  that  he  "was  brought  face  to  face  with  the  ques- 
tion whether  he  would  accept  Christ."30  On  a  Sabbath  even- 
ing in  the  autumn  of  1821,  he  says,  "I  made  up  my  mind 
that  I  would  settle  the  question  of  my  soul's  salvation  at 
once."31  So  closely  is  his  account  confined  to  his  own  sub- 
jective experiences  that  the  reader  is  tempted  to  suppose  that 
there  were  no  objective  occurrences  by  which  they  were 
brought  about.  In  point  of  fact  Finney's  conversion  took 
place  in  a  great  revival ;  and  it  was  currently  supposed  that 
his  final  step  was  the  result  of  the  exhortations  of  Jedediah 
Burchard.32    Ever  since  his  return  to  the  West  he  had  been 


29  Tract  on  Prevailing  Prayer. 

30  Memoirs,  p.  11. 

31  P.    12. 

32  For  example,  Joseph  I.  Foot  (Literary  and  Theological  Review, 
March,  1828,  p.  70)  when  speaking  of  the  fanatical  teaching  of  John 
Truair,  continues :  "Over  the  field  where  Truair  had  recently  sown 
the  seeds,  the  Rev.  J.  Burchard  soon  passed,  whose  subsequent  labors 
in  the  vicinity  are  said  to  have  brought  forth  the  Rev.  C.  G.  Finney:' 
A  more  favorable  opinion  of  Truair  is  expressed  by  Fowler,  as  cited, 
pp.  644  ff.,  and  as  favorable  an  account  of  Burchard  as  could  be  given 
may  be  found  in  the  same  work,  pp.  278  ff.  Burchard  was  at  the  time 
still  a  layman,  resident  at  Sackett's  Harbor,  and  zealously  holding  lay 
services  there  and  at  Adams. 


14  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

living  in  the  presence  of  revival  conditions.  The  revival 
of  1815  already  mentioned  as  sweeping  over  this  region, 
had  been  followed  by  others  without  intermission.  Sixty- 
five  converts  were  added  to  the  little  church  at  Adams  in 
1 819,  at  the  opening  of  Gale's  ministry  there.  Seventy 
were  added  to  the  church  at  Sackett's  Harbor  in  1820.  In 
1 82 1  the  whole  region  was  stirred  to  its  depths;  from  eight 
hundred  to  a  thousand  converts  were  reported  from  Jeffer- 
son County — no  fewer  than  seventy  or  eighty  from  Fin- 
ney's home  hamlet,  Henderson.  In  Adams  itself  one  of  the 
churches  received  forty-four  new  members  and  the  other 
sixty  or  seventy.33  It  was  in  these  stirring  scenes  that 
Finney's  conversion  took  place.  He  gives  us  a  very  detailed 
account  of  his  experiences  in  it.34  The  most  notable  feature 
of  these  experiences  is  their  supernaturalism;  a  supernatur- 
alism  not  wholly  in  keeping  with  his  strenuous  subsequent 
insistance  on  the  "make  yourself  a  new  heart"  of  the  "New 
Divinity";  there  is  imbedded  in  them  a  most  poignant  ex- 
perience of  express  inability.35  The  account  of  them, 
written  in  his  old  age,  is  more  or  less  adjusted  to  his  sub- 
sequent modes  of  thought,38  and  closes  with  a  couple  of  odd 
paragraphs  in  which  he  "improves"  his  conversion  by  rep- 

83  Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  190,  drawing  the  details  from  The  Utica 
Christian  Repository,  of  the  time.  The  general  fact  is  safeguarded  by 
the  report  of  the  Presbytery  of  St.  Lawrence  itself,  which  mentions 
revivals  as  occurring  at  Watertown,  Sackett's  Harbor,  Adams,  first 
and  second,  Lorraine,  and  Rodman. 

34  Memoirs,  chapter  2. 

3r>  Lyman  H.  Atwater,  The  Presbyterian  Quarterly  and  Princeton 
Review,  Oct.  1876,  p.  706  remarks  on  this,  while  G.  F.  Wright,  p.  9 
seeks  to  explain  it  away. 

36  G.  F.  Wright,  as  cited,  p.  6,  speaking  of  interpreting  Finney's  con- 
version says:  "The  difficulty  of  such  an  interpretation  is  also  some- 
what increased  by  the  fact  that,  in  the  Memoirs  by  himself,  Finney  has 
accompanied  his  narrative  by  numerous  doctrinal  disquisitions,  in 
which  those  familiar  with  the  controversies  of  the  time  readily  detect 
the  results  of  subsequent  years  of  reflection  interjecting  their  later 
theology  in  the  narrative  of  early  experience."  "It  is  extremely  im- 
probable," he  declares,  "that  the  theological  system  defended  in  his 
later  life  burst  upon  his  mind  at  the  outset  in  such  complete  form  as 
his  own   narrative  would  imply." 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  1 5 

resenting  it  as  impressing  then  and  there  indelibly  on  his 
mind  his  later  doctrines  of  justification  in  foro  conscientiae 
rather  than  in  foro  Dei,  and  of  its  issue  in  sinlessness.  "I 
could  not  feel  a  sense  of  guilt  or  condemnation,  by  any 
effort  that  I  could  make;  my  sins  were  gone;  and  I  do  not 
think  I  felt  any  more  sense  of  guilt  than  if  I  had  never 
sinned.  ...  I  felt  myself  justified  by  faith;  and,  so  far 
as  I  could  see,  I  was  in  a  state  in  which  I  did  not  sin.  In- 
stead of  feeling  that  I  was  sinning  all  the  time,  my  heart 
was  so  full  of  love  that  it  overflowed — I  could  not  feel 
that  I  was  sinning  against  God,  nor  could  I  recover  the 
least  sense  of  guilt  for  my  past  sins."37  He  adds :  "Of  this 
experience  I  said  nothing  that  I  recollect,  at  the  time,  to 
anybody;  that  is,  of  this  experience  of  justification." 

Finney  emerged  from  his  conversion  a  new  man:  the 
"sceptic  and  scoffer"  had  become  the  believer  and  zealous 
propagandist.  His  devotion  to  the  legal  profession  fell 
away  at  once  with  his  old  man ;  he  assumed  immediately  the 
new  profession  of  bringing  men  to  Christ.  A  judicial  case 
on  which  he  was  engaged  came  up  for  trial  the  morning 
after  his  conversion.  "I  have  a  retainer  from  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  to  plead  His  cause  and  I  cannot  plead  yours," 
he  said  to  his  astonished  client.  And  at  once  he  went  out 
on  the  streets  to  compel  them  to  come  in.  It  is  not  possible 
to  obtain  a  connected  view  of  his  activities  during  the  two 
years  between  the  outstanding  dates  of  his  conversion  in  the 
autumn  of  1821  and  his  licensure  by  the  Presbytery  of 
St.  Lawrence  on  Dec.  30,  1823.  His  biographer  says  that 
"about  as  much  mystery  hangs  over  the  first  year  and  a 
half  of  Finney's  life  subsequent  to  his  conversion  as  that 
which  shrouds  the  corresponding  period  of  the  apostle 
Paul's  renewed  life."38  The  comparison,  to  be  sure,  is  not 
very  apt ;  but  it  is  true  that  although  we  know  many  details 
of  Finney's  activities  during  this  period  and  its  general 
character  is  clear,  our  knowledge  of  it  remains  confused. 


37  Memoirs,  p.  23;  cf.  18. 

38  G.  F.  Wright,  as  cited,  p.  19. 


1 6  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

The  account  Finney  gives  of  himself  after  his  conversion 
loses  itself  in  unordered  details;  and  his  dates  give  us  no 
guidance,  being  all  wrong.  He  makes  it  perfectly  plain, 
however,  that  he  at  once  gave  himself  to  active  Christian 
work,  which  centered  in  the  church  at  Adams,  but  reached 
out  also  at  least  to  his  old  home  at  Henderson ;  there  he  had 
the  happiness  of  bringing  his  parents  to  Christ.  From 
another  account,89  we  learn  that  he  "actively  engaged  in 
the  same  schoolhouse  labors"  which  were  being  carried  on 
by  Jedediah  Burchard,  as  a  layworker,  from  his  center  at 
Sackett's  Harbor. 

In  the  midst  of  these  activities,  he  was  taken  under  the 
care  of  Presbytery  of  St.  Lawrence  with  a  view  to  the 
gospel  ministry,  at  a  meeting  held  at  Adams,  June  25,  1823, 
and  was  "directed  to  pursue  his  studies  under  the  direction 
of  Rev.  Messrs.  Gale  and  Boardman."40  It  would  not  have 
been  easy  to  find  better  men  for  this  service.41  They  were 
both  men  of  sufficient  learning,  great  force  of  character, 
and  skill  in  dealing  with  men.  The  whole  work  apparently, 
however,  fell  into  the  hands  of  Gale,  who  was  also  Finney's 
pastor,42  and  with  whom  he  was  already  in  consultation. 
There  was  no  mental  sympathy  between  the  two  young 
men — Gale  was  now  in  his  thirty-fourth  year  and  Finney 
in  his  th irty- first :  each  was  conscious  of  native  power,  and 
was  tenacious  of  his  opinions;  and  the  so-called  instruction 
appears  to  have  degenerated  into  a  constant  wrangle. 
Finney  brought  to  Gale  the  unordered  Pelagianism  of  the 
man  in  the  street,  strengthened  and  sharpened  by  the  habits 

39  Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  190. 

*°  Fowler,  p.  258;  G.  F.  Wright,  p.  20. 

41  There  are  biographical  sketches  of  both  in  Alfred  Nevin's  Encyclo- 
paedia of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  1834,  sub  nomm.,  and  in  Fowler, 
as  cited,  pp.  100,  467  and  552  respectively.  For  Gale  see  also  Martha 
F.  Webster,  Seventy-five  Significant  Years;  The  Story  of  Knox 
College,  1837-1912,  19 12,  pp.   1  ff. 

**  Memoirs,  p.  46:  "They  appointed  my  pastor  to  superintend  my 
studies."  On  p.  140  accordingly  he  calls  Gale  simply,  "my  theological 
teacher,"  and  on  p.  153,  with  meticulous  care,  explains  that  Gale  had 
"by  direction  of  the  Presbytery  attended  somewhat  to  my  theological 
studies." 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  \J 

of  thought  picked  up  in  the  law-courts;  and  he  used  Gale 
merely  as  an  anvil  on  which  to  beat  his  own  views  into 
shape.  His  attitude  at  first  was  one  of  mere  denial ;  he 
rejected  with  decision,  not  to  say  violence,  the  evangelical 
system  which  Gale  sought  to  inculcate.  The  positive  con- 
struction naturally  came  more  slowly.  "My  views  took  on 
a  positive  type  but  slowly.  At  first  I  found  myself  unable 
to  receive  his  peculiar  views;  and  then  gradually  formed 
views  of  my  own  in  opposition  to  them,  which  appeared  to 
me  to  be  unequivocally  taught  in  the  Bible."43  We  do  not 
know  when  his  views  were  fully  formed.  When  they  were, 
they  had  run  into  the  mold  of  the  "New  Divinity"  in  the 
special  form  in  which  it  was  being  taught  at  the  moment  in 
New  Haven.  There  are  some  who  think  this  result  purely 
accidental :  Finney,  a  great  original  thinker,  reproduced 
for  himself  without  any  connection  with  him  whatever, 
what  N.  W.  Taylor  was  teaching  with  such  revolutionary 
effect  in  New  Haven.44  So  far  as  the  fundamental  principle 
and  general  substance  of  his  thought  are  concerned  no  doubt 
this  is  the  true  account  to  give  of  its  origin.  Pelagianism, 
unfortunately,  does  not  wait  to  be  imported  from  New 
Haven,  and  does  not  require  inculcating — it  is  the  instinctive 
thought  of  the  natural  man.  But  Finney's  thought  ran  not 
merely  into  the  general  mold  of  Pelagianism,  but  into  the 
special  mold  of  the  particular  mode  of  stating  Pelagianism 
which  had  been  worked  out  by  N.  W.  Taylor.  The  his- 
torian of  New  England  Theology  feels  compelled  therefore 
to  say  that  "independent  as  it  was,  and  vigorously  as  its 
author  had  impressed  upon  it  the  marks  of  his  own  pro- 
nounced individuality,"  Finney's  theology  "may  be  dis- 
missed in  the  one  word  'Taylorism.'  "45    There  were  "vari- 

43  Memoirs,  p.  54. 

44  For  example,  A.  T.  Swing,  The  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  July  1900.  465: 
"What  in  New  England  had  been  gradually  evolved  from  Old  Calvinism 
through  two  generations  of  theological  reformers  was  substantially 
wrought  out  independently  of  them  by  President  Finney's  rational  re- 
volt (Memoirs,  pp.  7,  42-60),  which  was  so  closely  connected  with  his 
conversion  as  to  be  practically  inseparable  from  it." 

45  Frank  H.  Foster,  A  Genetic  History  of  New  England  Theology, 
1907,  p.  467. 


1 8  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

ous  underground  currents,"  he  says,46  which  "set  from  New 
Haven  westward,  and  some  of  them  bore  theological  ideas 
into  the  region  where  Finney  was."  We  do  not  need,  how- 
ever, to  raise  question  as  to  the  channels  of  communication 
by  which  Taylorism  was  brought  to  Finney.  Intercourse 
between  Connecticut  and  Western  New  York  was  constant ; 
Finney  received  part  of  his  education  in  Connecticut  and 
his  was  the  common  case;  all  the  ministers  of  his  acquain- 
tance were  trained  in  the  east  and  came  from  the  east  and 
maintained  connection  with  the  east;  and  Taylorism  was, 
at  the  moment,  the  vogue.  What  we  need  more  particularly 
to  ask  ourselves  is  only,  how  far  at  this  early  date  Finney's 
views  had  crystallized  into  distinctly  Taylorite  shape.  Ac- 
cording to  his  own  representation  in  his  Memoirs  they  had 
already  done  so,  at  least  in  general,  at  the  opening  of  his 
ministry;  and  certainly  we  cannot  trace  any  other  type  of 
teaching  in  any  account  we  have  of  his  work.  We  know 
no  other  Finney  than  the  Taylorite  Finney. 

On  the  30th  of  December  1823,  only  six  months  after 
he  had  been  taken  under  the  care  of  the  Presbytery,  Finney 
was  licensed  to  preach  the  Gospel  at  a  meeting  of  the  Pres- 
bytery of  St.  Lawrence  held  at  Adams.  He  tells  us  that 
the  Presbytery  dealt  gently  with  him  and  avoided  raising- 
questions  on  which  he  differed  from  it.  Having  now  be- 
come a  minister,  he  entered  at  once  upon  his  ministerial 
labors  in  the  northern  part  of  Jefferson  County — Evans 
Mills  and  Antwerp — as  a  missionary  in  the  employment 
of  the  Female  Missionary  Society  of  the  Western  District 
of  New  York.  As  such  a  man  naturally  would  be,  he  was 
successful  in  his  labors  from  the  start.  He  was  ordained 
on  his  field,  July  I,  1824,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Presbytery 
at  Evans  Mills;  and  seems  to  have  contemplated  settling  at 
that  place  in  a  permanent  pastorate.  He  was  drawn  off, 
however,  into  further  evangelistic  labors,  and  prosecuted 
them  unbrokenly  in  Jefferson  and  St.  Lawrence  counties 
up  to  the  autumn  of    1825.     During  these  two  years  he 

48  P.  453- 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  IO, 

lived  the  ordinary  life  of  a  frontier  missionary,  witnessing 
the  same  kinds  of  incidents — some  of  them  bizarre  enough 
— making  the  common  experiences,  but  reaping  more  than 
ordinarily  rich  a  harvest.  According  to  his  representations 
the  matter  of  his  preaching  was  constantly  the  "New  Di- 
vinity"— pressed  on  his  hearers  with  the  pungency  of  ex- 
pression, extremity  of  statement,  and  polemical  vehemence, 
which  belonged  to  his  natural   temperament. 

This  period  was  brought  to  a  close,  and  the  greatest 
episode  of  Finney's  life  inaugurated,  by  an  unforeseen 
occurrence.  He  visited  the  Synod  of  Utica,  of  which  he 
was  a  member,  in  October  1825,47  and  on  beginning  his 
return  journey  home  was  waylaid  by  G.  W.  Gale,  his  "theo- 
logical teacher,"  as  he  calls  him  here,48  and  induced  to  turn 
aside  to  preach  at  Western.  Gale  had  been  compelled  by  ill 
health  to  resign  his  charge  at  Adams  in  1823,  shortly  before 
Finney  left  that  place,  and  was  now  engaged  on  a  farm 
at  Western  in  laying  the  foundations  of  what  was  to  be  an 
eminently  successful  and  indeed  famous  Manual  Labor  In- 
stitution, the  parent  of  many  less  successful  similar  ven- 
tures. This  preaching  at  Western  broadened  out  into  seven 
years  (1 825-1 832)  of  probably  the  most  spectacular  revival 
activity  the  country  has  ever  witnessed.  That  Finney  felt 
himself  to  have  taken  a  decisive  step  forward  in  entering 
upon  this  work, — to  have  advanced  to  a  new  stage  in  his 
career — may  be  indicated  by  his  transferring  his  presby- 
terial  membership  from  the  presbytery  of  St.  Lawrence 
to  that  of  Oneida.49  He  had  turned  his  back  on  frontier 
work:  henceforth  his  labors  lay  in  the  towns  and  cities  of 
this  rich  and  populous  region,  with  their  established  churches 

47  G.  F.  Wright,  as  cited,  p.  46,  erroneously  says  "October  1826." 
Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  202,  says  "the  last  of  September,  1825."  Finney 
himself  (Memoirs  p.  140)  says  it  was  in  October. 

48  Memoirs,  p.  140. 

49  In  the  Minutes  of  the  General  Assembly,  for  1825,  Finney  is 
listed  as  a  \V.  C.  of  the  Presbytery  of  St.  Lawrence.  In  the  Minutes 
for  1828,  he  is  listed  as  a  W.  C.  of  the  Presbytery  of  Oneida.  These 
lists  were  at  that  time  printed  only  every  three  years:  there  are  none 
therefore  for   1826  and   1827. 


20  THE   PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

and  organized  religious  activities, — and  beyond.  In  his 
Memoirs  he  marks  the  transition  by  pausing  to  note  that 
"at  this  place  commenced  that  series  of  revivals,  afterward 
called  The  Western  Revivals.' "  Lyman  Beecher  calls 
them  by  the  more  designative  name  of  "the  Oneida  de- 
nunciatory revivals."50  They  may  have  owed  the  feature 
which  won  them  this  designation,  and  much  else  about  them 
that  brought  them  into  disrepute,  in  part  at  least  to  the  cir- 
cumstance that  they  were  an  invasion  of  the  backwoods 
into  civilization.  Here  was  this  young  man,  but  two  years 
a  minister,  but  four  a  Christian,  with  no  traditions  of  re- 
finement behind  him,  and  no  experience  of  preaching  save 
as  a  frontier  missionary,  suddenly  leading  an  assault  upon 
the  churches.  He  was  naturally  extravagant  in  his  asser- 
tions, imperious  and  harsh  in  his  bearing,  relying  more  on 
harrowing  men's  feelings  than  on  melting  them  with  tender 
appeal.  "Force,"  says  the  judicious  observer  whom  we  are 
here  drawing  upon — "force  was  his  factor,  and  'breaking 
down'  his  process."51  And  in  exercising  this  force  he  did 
not  shrink  from  denunciations  which  bordered  on  the  de- 
famatory, or  from  the  free  use  of  language  which  can  be 
characterized  no  otherwise  than  as  coarse  and  irreverent. 

All  this  was  no  doubt  to  be  expected  in  the  circumstances ; 
and  it  was  to  be  expected  also  no  doubt  that  Finney  should 
give  himself  of  set  purpose  to  stir  up  a  commotion;  and, 
having  the  assistance  of  a  band  of  able  coadjutors,  that  he 
should  succeed  in  doing  so  to  an  incredible  extent.  The 
whole  region  was  stricken  with  religious  excitement,  and 
nothing  was  permitted  to  stand  in  the  way  of  fanning  this 
excitement  into  ever  hotter  flames.  Parishes  were  invaded 
without  invitation,  churches  divided,  opposing  ministers 
"broken  down,"  or  even  driven  from  their  pulpits,  the 
people  everywhere  set  and  kept  on  edge.  Finney  was  under 
no  illusions  as  to  the  nature  of  this  excitement  or  as  to  its 
dangers.    He  did  not  confound  it  with  a  movement  of  grace 


r,°  Autobiography,  Edited  by  Charles  Beecher,  vol.  ii,  p.  345. 
81  Fowler,  as  cited,  p.  264. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  21 

It  was  only  an  instrument  which  he  used  to  attract  popular 
attention  to  the  business  he  had  in  hand.  It  served  him  in 
other  words  as  a  means  of  "advance  publicity."  "It  seems 
sometimes  to  be  indispensable,"  he  says,52  that  a  high  de- 
gree of  excitement  should  prevail  for  a  time,  to  arrest  public 
and  individual  attention,  and  to  draw  people  off  from  other 
pursuits  to  attend  to  the  concerns  of  their  souls."  This 
function  served,  the  excitement  is  so  little  of  further  value 
that  it  becomes  noxious;  it  now  draws  the  mind  off  from 
the  religion  to  prepare  the  way  for  which  it  is  invoked,  and 
if  it  were  long  continued,  "in  the  high  degree  in  which  it 
is  often  witnessed,"  it  could  end  in  nothing  but  insanity. 
Nevertheless  Finney  permitted  himself  to  play  with  this 
fire;  and  it  is  a  question  whether  his  chief  work  in  this 
region  consisted  in  much  else  than  in  kindling  it.  Certainly 
the  characteristic  feature  of  these  "Western  Revivals"  lies 
in  the  immensity  of  the  religious  excitement  engendered 
by  them ;  and  it  is  matter  of  discussion  until  to-day  whether 
their  chief  results  are  not  summed  up  in  this  effect.  That 
many  souls  were  born  again  and  became  ultimately  the  sup- 
port and  stay  of  the  churches  of  the  region,  nobody  doubts. 
As  little  does  anybody  doubt  that  grave  evils  also  resulted, 
the  effects  of  which  have  been  overcome  only  with  difficulty 
and  through  the  lapse  of  time.  There  is  room  for  differ- 
ence only  in  the  relative  estimate  placed  on  these  two  op- 
posite effects. 

One  reason  why  many  were  converted  in  these  re- 
vivals was  that  there  were  very  many  to  be  converted;  and 
the  character  of  this  large  unconverted  multitude  accounts, 
no  doubt,  in  part  also  for  their  accessibility  to  a  revival  of 
this  type.  The  churches  were  in  a  depressed  state  and  this 
meant  both  an  abnormally  low  condition  of  Christian  life 
within  them,  and  an  abnormally  large  mass  of  indifference 
or  worse  without  them :  an  abnormal  reaction  was  to  be 
expected,  and  was  indeed  inevitable.    Asa  Mahan  tells  us,58 


52  Views  of  Sanctification,  1840,  p.   19. 

53  Autobiography,  1881,  p.  221. 


22  THE    PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

that,  observing  these  things,  he  had  formed  the  distinct  im- 
pression, before  the  revival  came,  that  they  must  have  a 
great  and  general  revival  of  religion,  or  the  churches  would 
soon  become  extinct.  "My  reasons  for  this  conviction," 
says  he.  "were  two-fold:  the  general  and  embittered  op- 
position to  religion  itself,  and  the  appalling  neglect  of  re- 
ligious services,  on  the  part  of  the  unconverted,  outside  the 
churches,  on  the  one  hand ;  and  the  utter  worldliness  and 
indifference  to  the  interests  of  souls  and  the  cause  of  re- 
ligion itself  on  the  part  of  professors  of  Christianity,  on 
the  other."  "No  one,"  he  adds,  "not  personally  acquainted 
with  the  facts  as  they  were  can  conceive  how  appalling  these 
two  aspects  of  the  moral  and  religious  state  of  the  com- 
munity then  appeared."  The  harvest  was  ripe  and  waiting 
for  the  sickle.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  also,  that  a  very 
large  proportion  of  those  swept  into  the  churches  by  the  ex- 
citement of  the  revival  were  not  really  converted,  as  their 
subsequent  history  only  too  clearly  proved.  Joseph  Ives 
Foot,  writing  in  1838,  is  constrained  to  say:54  "During  ten 
years  hundreds  and  perhaps  thousands  were  annually  re- 
ported to  be  converted  on  all  hands ;  but  now  it  is  admitted, 
that  his  (Finney's)  real  converts  are  comparatively  few. 
It  is  declared  even  by  himself  that  'the  great  body  of  them 
are  a  disgrace  to  religion ;'  as  a  consequence  of  their  de- 
fections, practical  evils,  great,  terrible,  and  innumerable, 
are  in  various  quarters  rushing  in  on  the  Church." 

It  is  very  true  that  Finney  could  not  conceal  the  in- 
stability of  his  converts  from  himself.  Later  he  found  a 
reason  for  it.  It  was  because  he  had  brought  them  only 
into  traditional  Christianity,  and  not  into  perfectionism. 
"While  I  inculcated  the  common  views,"  he  says.'"'  meaning 
the  common  views  as  to  an  as  yet  imperfect  sanctification, 
"I    was   often   instrumental    in    bringing   Christians    under 


' ■»  Literary  and  Theological  Review,  March  1838,  p.  39.  For  Foot 
see  W.  B.  Sprague,  Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit,  vol.  iv.  1858,  pp. 
66off.(    and    the    Memoir   by    his    brother,    George    Foot,    mentioned    by 

Sprague. 

•■  Lectures   On   Systematic    Theology,  ed.    1851,   p.  619. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  2$ 

great  conviction  and  into  a  state  of  temporary  repentance 
and  faith" — it  is  thus  that  he  speaks  of  his  entire  evan- 
gelistic work  up  to  1836! — "but,"  he  continues,  "falling 
short  of  urging  them  up  to  a  point  where  they  would  be- 
come so  acquainted  with  Christ  as  to  abide  in  Him,  they 
would  soon  relapse  again  into  their  former  state.  I  seldom 
saw,  and  can  now  understand  that  I  had  no  reason  to  ex- 
pect to  see,  under  the  instruction  that  I  then  gave,  such  a 
state  of  religious  principle,  understanding  and  confirmed 
walking  with  God,  among  Christians  as  I  have  seen  since 
the  change  in  my  views  and  instructions."  There  lies  in 
this  passage  an  affecting  acknowledgment  of  the  failure  of 
his  early  evangelistic  labors  to  produce  permanent  results. 
One  of  the  odd  things  connected  wTith  it,  however,  is  that 
Finney  fancies  that,  had  he  preached  perfectionism,  the 
effect  might  have  been  different — meaning  that  the  per- 
fectionism of  his  converts  would  have  protected  them  from 
sinning.  In  point  of  fact,  though  he  did  not  himself  preach 
perfectionism,  his  preaching  made  perfectionists,  as  more 
than  one  witness  testifies  ;56  and  his  preaching  of  perfection- 
ism could  scarcely  have  done  more  than  that.  Yet  the  re- 
sults were  as  we  have  seen.  Jedediah  Burchard  roundly 
asserts  that  all  revivals  produce  a  crop  of  perfectionists, 
having  in  mind  of  course,  the  type  of  revival  known  to  him. 
Finney  does  not  go  as  far  as  that,  but  is  willing  to  allow 
that  revivals — again  of  course  revivals  such  as  he  fomented 
— are  commonly  accompanied  by  a  certain  amount  of  what 
he  would  call  fanaticism.  In  a  tract  written  in  his  old  age, 
called  Hindrances  to  Revivals,  he  declares  that  he  has  sel- 


56  Take  for  example  the  following  words  of  Joseph  I.  Foot  (Literary 
and  Theological  Review,  March  1838,  p.  70)  :  "These  doctrines  with 
a  corresponding  system  of  measures  were  driven  like  a  hurricane 
through  the  churches.  .  .  .  Hundreds  and  thousands  .  .  .  were  led 
to  believe  themselves  converted,  and  were  immediately  driven  into  the 
church.  .  .  .  Many  of  his  (Finney's)  spiritual  progeny,  under  the 
abilities  of  his  system  [that  is,  under  his  teaching  of  a  Pelagian  ability 
of  will],  and  the  several  influences  which  acted  upon  them,  soon 
manifested  their  fatherhood  [Pelagian]  and  declared  themselves  to 
be  perfect.  ..." 


24  THE   PRINCETON    THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

dom  seen  a  revival  in  which  a  bitter,  denunciatory,  fault- 
finding spirit  did  not  make  its  appearance  sooner  or  later, 
and  that  to  a  considerable  extent.  His  account  of  this 
phenomenon  is  that  when  the  Spirit  of  God  is  poured  out 
on  a  people,  Satan  pours  himself  out  on  them  too. 

The  phenomenon,  however,  will  admit  of  another  explan- 
ation, especially  when  we  learn  that  in  propagating  these  re- 
vivals everything  was  bent  to  the  production  of  the  excited 
state  of  feeling  that  was  aimed  at,  and  all  ordinary  Chris- 
tian duties  were  in  abeyance — absorbed  in  the  one  duty  of 
exaltation  of  feeling.    Thus,  for  example,  Josephus  Brock- 
way57  tells  us  that  it  was  noted  by  all  during  the  revival 
excitement  at  Troy  in   1826-7,   that  the  whole   charitable 
work   of   the   churches    fell   away   and   even   the   Sabbath 
Schools  were  neglected:  all  manifestations  of  Christian  love 
stopped :  there  was  nothing,  he  says,  but  "a  machine  put  in 
motion  by  violence  and  carried  on  by  power."     Even  the 
Bible  was  thrust  aside.     "For  a  long  time,  during  the  high 
state  of  feeling,"  he  writes,58  "(when,  indeed,  feeling  was 
made  a  substitute  for  every  Christian  duty),  the  Bible  must 
not  be  introduced  at  all,  into  any  social  meeting,  from  one 
month's  end  to  another.     And  while  the  exhortation  was 
often  reiterated,  'Come,  brethren,  pray  now,  but  don't  make 
any  cold  prayers,'  is  was  evidently  held,  although  I  do  not 
say  it  was  publicly  expressed,  that  reading  of  the  Bible  was 
too  cold  a  business  for  a  Revival  spirit.     No  time  must  be 
wasted  in  reading  or  singing,  but  the  whole  uninterruptedly 
devoted   to   praying  with   this    faith  and   particularity,   so 
vastly   important."     We   are   witnessing  here   a   sustained 
effort  to  push  excited  feeling  on  to  the  breaking  point. 

To  the  breaking  point,  of  course,  it  came,  all  over  the 
region  which  the  revivals  covered;  and  despite  those  who 
had  been  brought  into  a  sure  hope  of  eternal  life — absolutely 
a  large  number,  let  us  believe — the  last  stage  of  the  region 
as  such  was  worse  than  the  first.     It  is  the  calm  judgment 

8T  A  Delineation  of  the  Characteristic  Features  of  a  Revival  of 
Religion  in  Troy  in  T826  and  /V'r.  iv'-7.  p.  47. 

M  Ibid,  p.  28.  * 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  2$ 

of  a  man  of  affairs  and  of  letters,  seeking  to  put  on  record 
an  observed  social  and  religious  phenomenon,  which  we 
have  in  the  following  statement  of  facts  by  the  editor  of 
the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser:™  "Look  at  the 
present  condition  of  the  churches  of  Western  New  York, 
which  have  become  in  truth  'a  people  scattered  and  peeled.' 
The  time  has  not  come  to  write  the  ecclesiastical  history 
of  the  past  ten  years.  And  yet  somebody  should  chronicle 
the  facts  now,  lest  in  after  times  the  truth,  however  cor- 
rectly it  may  be  preserved  by  tradition,  should  not  be  be- 
lieved. .  .  .  The  writer  entertains  no  doubt  that  many  true 
conversions  have  occurred  under  the  system  to  which  he  is 
referring.  But  as  with  the  ground  over  which  the  lightning 
has  gone,  scorching  and  withering  every  green  thing,  years 
may  pass  away  before  the  arid  waste  of  the  church  will  be 
grown  over  by  the  living  herbage."  If  any  corroboration 
of  this  testimony  were  needed,  it  would  be  supplied  by  that 
of  the  workers  in  these  revivals  themselves.  James  Boyle 
writes  to  Finney  himself  December  25,  1834 :60  "Let  us 
look  over  the  fields  where  you  and  others  and  myself  have 
labored  as  revival  ministers,  and  what  is  now  their  moral 
state?  What  was  their  state  within  three  months  after  we 
left  them  ?  I  have  visited  and  revisited  many  of  these  fields, 
and  groaned  in  spirit  to  see  the  sad,  frigid,  carnal,  conten- 
tious state  into  which  the  churches  had  fallen — and  fallen 
very  soon  after  our  first  departure  from  among  them." 
No  more  powerful  testimony  is  borne,  however,  than 
that  of  Asa  Mahan,  who  tells  us — to  put  it  briefly — 
that  everyone  who  was  concerned  in  these  revivals  suffered 
a  sad  subsequent  lapse:  the  people  were  left  like  a  dead 
coal  which  could  not  be  reignited;  the  pastors  were  shorn 
of  all  their  spiritual  power;  and  the  evangelists — "among 
them  all,"  he  says,  "and  I  was  personally  acquainted  with 

69  William  L.  Stone,  Matthias  and  His  Impostures,  1835,  pp.  314  ff. 
The  "system"  to  which  Colonel  Stone  is  referring  is  the  revival  system 
in  practice  in  Western  and  Central  New  York.  For  Stone,  see  Apple- 
ton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Biography,  sub  nom. 

60  Cited  in  the  Literary  and  Theological  Reviezv,  March   1838,  p.  66. 


26  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

nearly  every  one  of  them, — I  cannot  recall  a  single  man, 
brother  Finney  and  Father  Xash  excepted,  who  did  not 
after  a  few  years  lose  his  unction  and  become  equally  dis- 
qualified for  the  office  of  evangelist  and  that  of  pastor."01 

Thus  the  great  "Western  Revivals"  ran  out  into  disaster. 
Although  it  belongs  to  Finney's  earlier  missionary  labors 
it  is  a  typical  instance  of  their  effects  which  Ebenezer 
Hazard  Snowden  gives  us  from  his  own  parish.  "Both  Mr. 
Finney  and  Mr.  Burchard,"  he  says,  "made  special  efforts 
in  Brownsville,  where  I  was  afterward  settled.  Mr.  Wells, 
the  pastor,  who  was  before  beloved  by  every  man,  woman 
and  child,  was  as  a  result  obliged  to  give  up  his  charge  about 
the  time  Mr.  Finney  was  there.  Such  a  course  was  pur- 
sued as  exasperated  a  great  portion  of  the  respectable  mem- 
bers of  the  congregation,  and  they  immediately  set  up  an 
Episcopal  church  which  they  have  attended  ever  since.*" J 
As  a  consequence  of  such,  occurrences  Finney's  ministrations 
became  no  longer  acceptable,  and  his  preaching  no  longer 
effective  in  the  very  region  in  which  he  had  once  swayed 
men  like  a  wind  among  the  reeds.  Over  and  over  again, 
when  he  proposed  to  revisit  one  of  the  churches,  delegations 
were  sent  him  or  other  means  used,  to  prevent  what  was 
thought  of  as  an  affliction.     P.  H.  Fowler63  quite  uninten- 


61  Autobiography,  1881,  pp.  227  f. 

62  Baltimore  Literary  and  Religious  Magazine,  May  1838,  pp.  236  f. 
— Snowden  adds  about  Burchard:  "Mr.  Burchard's  meeting  there  was 
equally  disastrous  in  its  results.  He  assumed  the  airs  of  a  commander 
and  would  turn  off  about  so  many  every  day,  and  announce  those  to 
be  converted.  Some  of  those  who  thus  became  members  never  entered 
the  church  afterward.  Some  became  perfectionists,  and  of  the  re- 
mainder, many  were  expelled.  One  of  the  elders  remarked  to  me,  that 
the  church  lost  much  of  its  vitality  at  that  time."  Snowden,  born  in 
1799,  brought  up  in  Oneida  Co.,  graduated  at  Hamilton  College,  1818. 
admitted  to  the  bar  at  Utica,  joined  his  father's  church  at  Sackett's 
Harbor  about  the  time  Finney  was  joining  the  church  at  the  neighbor- 
ing town  of  Adams:  he  was  pastor  at  Brownsville  in  1836-7.  See  the 
Biographical    Catalogue    of    Princeton    Theological    Seminary,    1909, 

tub   nom.   p.    56;   and   especially   the    Neerological   Report,   presented   to 
the  Alumni  Association,  Princeton   Theological  Seminary.  May  7.  1895, 
1895,   pp.   294  f. 
68  As  cited,  p.  964. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  2~ 

tentionally  supplies  us  with  a  pungent  instance  of  the  decay 
of  Finney's  acceptibility  as  a  preacher  in  this  region,  of 
which  he  was  himself  cognizant.  Finney  came  back  in 
1855  to  Rome,  the  scene  of  one  of  his  greatest  triumphs  in 
1826.64  Now,  however,  his  preaching-  elicited  no  response. 
He  has  himself  told  us  of  it,05  and  attributes  what  seemed 
to  him  the  otherwise  inexplicable  coldness  of  his  reception, 
to  the  fault  of  the  pastor.  This  Fowler  declares  to  have 
been  very  erroneous  and  very  unjust.  He  himself  ascribes 
it  to  a  change  in  fashions  in  preaching.  Finney  preached, 
he  says,  just  as  he  did  in  1826,  with  the  same  ability,  earn- 
estness, force.  But  this  kind  of  preaching  was  passe — and 
"his  old  friends  in  Utica,  where  considerable  religious  in- 
terest existed,  deemed  it  unwise  to  invite  him  there."  This 
kind  of  preaching  was  not  passe,  however,  in  other  regions. 
It  was  still  capable  of  oppressing  men's  souls  elsewhere. 
But  not  again  here — even  after  a  generation  had  passed  by 
these  burnt  children  had  no  liking  for  the  fire. 

The  offence  of  Finney's  preaching  attached  both  to  its 
manner  and  to  its  matter ;  and  it  attached  not  to  his  preach- 
ing only  but  to  his  whole  manner  of  conducting  revivals, 
and  not  to  his  person  only  but  to  the  whole  bevy  of  assistants 
who  gathered  around  him  in  prosecuting  them.658     It  be- 

64  Memoirs,  p.  159. 

65  Memoirs,  p.  434. 

658  Marquis  L.  Worden,  (in  J.  Hepworth  Dixon's  Spiritual  Wives, 
vol.  ii,  p.  82)  tells  us  who  some  of  these  were :  "Revivals  prevailed  in 
the  neighborhood  and  region  about  Manlius,  and  through  the  country, 
in  which  the  New  Measure  Evangelists,  such  as  Luther  Myrick,  Ho- 
ratio Foote,  and  James  Boyle  led  the  way."  How  Foote  preached 
we  shall  let  Josephus  Brockway  (A  Delineation,  etc.,  1827,  pp.  57  f.) 
tell  us.  He  is  speaking  of  his  preaching  in  the  Troy  revivals, 
1826-7.  "I  went  to  Mr.  Foote,  a  would-be  minister,  who  was  no 
small  occasion  of  offence  and  dispute,  nor  ought  I,  perhaps,  to 
be  delicate  in  saying,  he  was  no  improper  object  of  contempt.  He 
preached  what  some  called  a  sermon,  in  which  he  attempted  to  show 
that  no  man  could  get  to  heaven  without  living  a  perfect  life.  I  went 
to  him  with  objections  to  his  sermon,  showing  them  to  Elder  Cushman 
as  I  went.  One  of  his  positions  was,  'That  man's  hope  ain't  worth  a 
groat  that  isn't  founded  on  obedience.' — To  which  I  objected,  that 
man's  hope  is  good  for  nothing  that  is  not  founded  on  the  merits  of 


28  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

longed  to  the  movement  itself  and  constituted  its  charac- 
teristic. We  have  seen  Lyman  Beecher  using  the  epithet 
"denunciatory"  in  describing  these  revivals,  and  it  may 
provisionally  serve  as  well  as  another  word  to  intimate  their 
peculiarity.  It  was  as  if  the  day  of  judgment  had  come  and 
the  instruments  of  vengeance  were  abroad,  with  whips  of 
scorpions,  lashing  the  people  into  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
Everywhere,  naturally,  there  was  wailing  and  gnashing  of 
teeth.  The  denunciation  indulged  in  was  constant  and 
unmeasured.  It  was  not  confined  to  the  preaching:  de- 
nunciatory praying  was  practiced  as  diligently  as  denun- 
ciatory preaching.  Diverted  from  their  ostensible  purpose 
as  petitions  to  the  Almighty,  prayers  were  employed  merely 
as  means  of  exciting  the  audience.  Sometimes  the  effect 
aimed  at  can  only  be  characterized  as  direct  hysteria.  At 
others,  usurping  the  place  of  preaching,  the  prayer  became 
an  assault  on  the  hearer;  and  that  not  merely  with  a  more 
or  less  general  reference,  but,  under  the  protection  of  the 
form  of  petition,  with  a  particularizing  of  the  precise  in- 
dividual intended  and  a  detailed  description  of  his  faults, 
which   would   scarcely   have   been   tolerated   in   preaching. 


Christ,  and  evinced  by  obedience.  Another  of  his  statements  was, 
'Sinners  never  can  be  saved,  and  whoever  has  preached  that  sinners  can 
be  saved,  has  preached  what  is  not  true.'  To  which  I  objected  that 
Christ  came  to  save  sinners,  and  there  was  none  in  our  world  to  be 
saved,  but  sinners.  ..."  Foote's  teaching  is  of  course  just  Pelagian 
Perfectionalism  in  its  purity — and  it  was  preached  in  the  Troy  revival 
as  part  of  its  official  presentation.  Finney  has  the  grace,  it  is  true, 
to  be  a  little  ashamed  of  it;  but  he  will  not  repudiate  it.  "In  the  midst 
of  the  revival,"  he  writes  in  his  Memoirs,  (p.  204),  "it  became  neces- 
sary that  I  should  leave  Troy  for  a  week  or  two,  and  visit  my  friends 
at  Whitesboro.  While  I  was  gone,  Rev.  Horatio  Foote  was  invited  by 
Dr.  Beman  to  preach.  I  do  not  know  how  often  he  preached ;  but  this 
I  recollect,  that  he  gave  great  offence  to  the  disaffected  members  of 
the  church.  He  bore  down  upon  them  with  the  most  scorching  dis- 
courses, so  I  learned."  He  wishes  to  roll  the  responsibility  of  inviting 
Foote  over  on  Beman  :  but  he  himself  endorses  him.  Foote  appears  in 
the  Minutes  of  the  General  Assembly  from  1825,  when  he  is  a  Licen- 
tiate of  the  Presbytery  of  Cayuga,  to  1854,  when  he  is  a  stated  supply 
at  Red  ford  and  resides  at  Ripley,  Ohio.  He  disappears  from  the 
Minutes  without  ever  having  held  a  settled  pastorate. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  20, 

People  were  "prayed  at"  rather  than  "prayed  for,"  with  the 
mind  obviously  set  more  on  moving  them  than  on  moving 
God.66 

We  are  observing  here  only  one  item  in  a  system  of  prac- 
tices which  formed  the  characteristic  feature  of  these  re- 
vivals, and  which  soon  came  to  be  known  collectively  as 
"the  new  measures."67  These  "new  measures"  of  course 
were  much  spoken  against;  but  all  opposition  to  them  was 
sternly  stamped  out.  There  was  no  more  highly  esteemed 
minister  in  this  region  than  William  Raymond  Weeks,  who 
was  at  the  time  serving  the  Congregationalist  Church  at 
Paris  Hill.68  A  Pastoral  Letter  issued  by  the  ministers  of 
the  Oneida  Association  of  which  he  was  a  member,  warning 
the  members  of  the  churches  under  its  care  against  the  new 
practices,  was  composed  by  him;69  and  naturally  also,  in 
writing  to  his  friends  in  the  east,  he  expressed  with  some 
decision  (for  that  belonged  to  his  character)  his  opinion 
of  the  evils  he  saw  being  thus  thrust  upon  the  people.    As  a 

66  Asahel  Xettleton  (Letters  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beecher  and  Rev.  Mr. 
Nettleton  on  the  "New  Measures"  in  conducting  Revivals  of  Religion, 
1828,  p.  35)  gives  the  following  as  the  substance  of  what  had  been 
communicated  to  him  on  this  subject  by  men  on  the  ground.  "There 
are  various  errors  in  the  mode  of  conducting  revivals  in  this  region, 
which  ought  to  be  distinctly  pointed  out.  That  on  the  prayer  of  faith. 
The  talking  to  God  as  a  man  talks  to  his  neighbor  is  truly  shocking — 
telling  the  Lord  a  long  story  about  A.  or  B.,  and  apparently  with  no 
other  intent  than  to  produce  a  kind  of  stage  effect  upon  the  individual 
in  question,  or  upon  the  audience  generally.  This  mouthing  of  words, 
these  deep  and  hollow  tones,  all  indicate  that  the  person  is  speaking 
into  the  ears  of  man  and  not  of  God.  I  say  nothing  of  the  petitions 
often  presented;  but  the  awful  irreverence  of  the  manner!" — On  the 
"particularity"  used  with  reference  to  individuals  in  public  prayer,  see 
Brockway,  as  cited,  p.  22  ff. 

67  Sprague,  Annals  etc.,  vol.  iv,  pp.  473  f. :  "His  situation  was  now 
rendered  very  unpleasant  by  the  introduction  of  what  were  technically 
called  the  'new  measures'  in  connection  with  revivals  of  religion :  and 
he  therefore  removed.  ..." 

68  Biographical  notice  in  VY.  B.  Sprague,  Annals,  etc.  vol.  iv,  pp. 
473  ff. ;  P.  H.  Fowler,  as  cited,  pp.  673  ff.,  85,  261,  274:  Appleton's  Cyclo- 
paedia of  American  Biography,  sub  nom. 

69  Pastoral  Letter  of  the  Ministers  of  the  Oneida  Association  to  the 
Churches  under  their  care,  on  the  Subject  of  Revivals  of  Religion. 
1827. 


30  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

result  not  only  was  he  driven  in  the  end  out  of  his  pulpit, 
but  his  memory  has  been  sedulously  defamed  ever  since. 
Fifty  years  after,  Finney  was  still  speaking  with  undeserved 
contempt  of  him,7"  and  he  and  Henry  Davis.71  President  at 
the  time  of  Hamilton  College — whose  crime  also  was  "op- 
position to  the  revivals" — seem  to  be  the  only  ones  among 
the  multitude  of  ministers  who  have  worked  in  Central  Xew 
York  discussed  by  P.  H.  Fowler  in  his  history,  whom  he 
has  dealt  with  with  obvious  injustice.  The  Pastoral  Letter 
which  was  the  head  and  front  of  Weeks'  offending,  is  not 
only  a  perfectly  inoffensive  but  an  eminently  judicious 
document,  expressed  in  entirely  temperate  language.  It 
is  absolutely  free  from  personalities,  and  equally  free  from 
rasping  particularizing.  Framed  in  general  terms,  it 
merely  enumerates  the  kinds  of  practices,  which  may  pos- 
sibly be  met  with  in  revivals  of  religion,  that  lovers  of 
God  and  their  own  souls  would  do  well  to  avoid.  It  might 
be  read  through  without  divining  that  it  was  directed 
against  any  particular  movement :  and  one  would  suppose 
that  its  serious  and  quiet  cautions  would  be  accepted  by  all 
as  an  excellent  road-book  for  the  wayfarer  through  a 
troubled  land.  That  the  participants  in  "the  Western  Re- 
vivals" were  quick  to  declare  that  their  own  portrait  was 
depicted  may  cause  us  some  surprise;  and  more,  that  their 
resentment  was  occasioned  not  by  their  looking  upon  the 
portrait  drawn  as  a  caricature  of  them,  but  by  the  painter's 
intimation  that  he  himself  considered  it  ugly.  We  clearly 
have,  in  this  calm  enumeration  of  things  to  be  avoided  in 
revivals,  a  trustworthy  outline  sketch  of  how  "the  Western 
Revivals"  were  being  carried  on. 

The  phrase  "new  measures"  soon  however,  acquired  a 
sense  of  rather  narrower  compass,  in  which  it  embraced 
only  those  of  the  new  practices  which  might  be  conceived  as 
means  employed  to  produce  the  effect  sought.7"     As  these 

7"  Memoirs,  p.   U4- 

"Biographical  notice  in  Sprague,  as  cited,  p.  244ft.:  Fowler,  as 
cited,  pp.  505  ff. ;  Applcton,  as  cited,  sub  now. 

Besides   the   Pastoral  Letter  of  the   Oneida   Association   and  the 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  3] 

came  to  be  more  fully  known,  they  astonished,  distressed, 
appalled  the  friends  of  revivals  everywhere;  and  most  of 
all,  as  was  natural,  those  who  felt  themselves  to  stand  in 
particularly  close  connection  with  the  churches  of  Central 
New  York — such  as  the  clergy  of  Connecticut.  Asahel 
Nettleton,  the  most  esteemed  "revival  minister"  of  the  day, 
took  the  lead  in  an  effort  to  abate  the  evil.73  Others — 
notably  Lyman  Beecher,74 — joined  themselves  to  him. 
Many — Griffin,  Porter,  Nott,  Tucker,  Cornelius — visited 
Troy  where  Finney  was  then  holding  revival  services,  that 
thev  mi°;ht  observe  "the  new  measures"  for  themselves. 
They  came  away  more  shocked  than  before.  Letters  were 
written.75  And  finally  a  conference  was  arranged — "the 
New  Lebanon  Convention,"  held  July  18-26,  1827 — in 
which  the  "Eastern  brethren"  endeavored  to  bring  their 
"Western  brethren"  to  reason.76    The  attempt  was  in  vain; 

Letters  of  Drs.  Beecher  and  Nettleton,  consult  on  "the  New  Measures" 
especially:  Andrew  Reed  and  James  Matheson ;  A  Narrative  of  a 
Visit  to  the  American  Churches  by  the  Deputation  from  the  Congre- 
gational Union  of  England  and  Wales,  1835,  vol.  II,  pp.  i,  ff.  (by 
Reed)  ;  C.  Hodge,  Biblical  Repertory  and  Theological  Review,  Oct. 
1825,  pp.  601-607;  Albert  B.  Dod,  Ibid,  pp.  626-674;  and  J.  W.  Kevin, 
The  Anxious  Bench,  1843.  Finney  tells  us  (Memoirs,  p.  288)  that  he 
made  little  or  no  use  of  "the  Anxious  Seat"  until  the  Rochester  Re- 
vivals of  1831.  G.  F.  Wright  (pp.  100  ff.),  while  properly  recognizing 
its  use  as  falling  in  with  Finney's  dogmatic  scheme,  errs  in  supposing 
that  the  opposition  to  it  turned  on  a  notion  in  the  minds  of  Finney's 
opponents  that  "there  was  little  natural  connection  between  the  means 
used  for  the  persuasion  of  men  and  their  conversion."  A  simple  read- 
ing of  their  discussions  will  show  that  their  objections  turned  on  quite 
other  considerations. 

73  See  Bennet  Tyler,  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Character  of  Rev. 
Asahel  Nettleton,  D.D.,  1844,  chapter  xii,  (p.  248-270),  "His  opposition 
to  the  new  measures." 

74  See  Autobiography,  edited  by  his  son,  Charles  Beecher,  1865,  vol. 
ii,  ch.  12:     "New  Measures,"  pp.  89-108. 

75  See  especially,  Letters  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beecher  and  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Nettleton,  on  the  "New  Measures"  in  conducting  Revivals  of  Religion; 
with  a  Review  of  a  Sermon  by  Novanglus,  1828. 

76  Finney  gives  an  account  of  the  Xew  Lebanon  Convention  from 
his  point  of  view  in  the  sixteenth  chapter  of  his  Memoirs  (pp.  202  ff.)  ; 
G.  F.  Wright  devotes  to  it  a  chapter  in  his  Life  of  Finney  (pp.  39  ff). 
It  will  be  found  described  from  their  point  of  view  in  the  Lives  of 
Nettleton  and  Beecher,  as  referred  to  above. 


32  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

and  the  fundamental  reason  why  it  was  in  vain  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  discern.  The  axe  was  not  laid  to  the  root  of  the 
tree.  The  "new  measures"  were  not  arbitrary  practices 
due  to  nothing  but  a  coarse  and  depraved  taste,  the  correc- 
tion of  which  might  be  easily  managed  and  need  work  no 
great  change  in  principle.  They  belonged  to  the  very  es- 
sence of  the  revival  as  conceived  by  its  promoters.  It  was 
in  them  that  its  heart  expressed  itself.  They  were  in  a  word 
the  natural  and  inevitable  effect  of  the  doctrine  on  which 
the  revival  was  based.  For  what  was  new  in  this  revival 
was  not  merely  the  particular  "  "measures"  by  which  it  was 
prosecuted — that  might  be  a  merely  surface  phenomenon 
— but  the  particular  doctrine  on  which  it  was  founded, 
of  which  the  measures  employed  were  only  the  manifesta- 
tion. This  was  a  Pelagian  revival.  That  was  its  peculiar- 
ity: and  everything  else  connected  with  it  was  merely  the 
expression  of  this. 

That  it  was  "the  new  measures"  rather  than  the  Pel- 
agianism  of  the  "Western  Revivals"  which  in  the  first  in- 
stance at  least  offended  the  Eastern  brethren  is  no  doubt 
due  in  part  to  the  general  fact  that  it  is  always  external 
things  which  first  meet  the  eye.  The  external  things 
in  this  instance  were  shocking  in  themselves;  and  their 
rooting  in  a  doctrinal  cause  was  often  felt  but  vaguely  or 
not  at  all.  Pelagianizing  modes  of  thought,  derived  from 
the  same  general  source  from  which  Finney  had  himself 
drunk — the  "New  Divinity"  taught  at  New  Haven, — were 
moreover  widely  diffused  among  the  New  England  clergy 
themselves.  Men  of  this  type  of  thinking  might  be  offended 
by  Finney's  practices  on  general  grounds,  but  could  scarcely 
be  expected,  for  that  very  reason,  to  assign  them  as  to  their 
cause  to  a  doctrine  common  to  his  and  their  own  thinking. 
And  that  the  more  that  there  were  as  yet  no  adequate  means 
of  ascertaining  what  the  doctrinal  basis  of  Finney's  preach- 
ing was.  Only  his  actual  hearers  were  in  any  real  sense 
informed  of  his  teaching.  When  a  little  later  he  began  to 
publish  lectures   and   sermons  the  scales   fell   from   men's 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  33 

eyes.  The  discerning  had  no  difficulty  then  in  seeing  the 
correlation  between  his  practices  and  his  doctrines,  or  in 
clearly  understanding  that  the  phenomena  of  his  revivals 
which  gave  most  offence  were  merely  the  natural  conse- 
quences of  the  fundamental  fact  that  they  were  Pelagian 
revivals. 

Accordingly  Albert  B.  Dod  is  found  writing:77  "We 
recollect  that  it  was  matter  of  surprise  to  many,  when 
the  conjunction  took  place  between  the  coarse,  bustling 
fanaticism  of  the  New  Measures  and  the  refined  intellectual 
abstractions  of  the  Xew  Divinity.  It  was  a  union  between 
Mars  and  Minerva, — unnatural  and  boding  no  good  to  the 
church.  But  our  readers  will  have  observed  that  there  is  a 
close  and  logical  connection  between  Mr.  Finney's  theology 
and  his  measures.  The  demand  created  for  the  one  by  the 
other  and  the  mutual  assistance  which  they  render  are  so 
evident,  that  we  will  spend  no  time  in  the  explanation  of 
them."  And  Charles  Hodge  :78  'That  the  new  measures 
and  the  new  divinity  should  have  formed  an  intimate  alliance 
can  surprise  no  one  aware  of  their  natural  affinity.  .  .  . 
Xo  better  method  could  be  devised  to  secure  the  adoption 
of  the  new  doctrines  than  the  introduction  of  the  new  meas- 
ures. The  attempt  has  accordingly  been  made.  The  cold, 
Pelagian  system  of  the  new  divinity  has  been  attached  to 
the  engine  of  fanaticism."  These  writers,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, do  not  assert  that  such  practices  as  are  summed  up 
in  the  "new  measures"  may  not  exist — have  not  existed — 
apart  from  a  determinate  Pelagian  system:  what  they 
affirm  is  that  it  is  in  such  practices  that  a  Pelagian  system 
naturally  expresses  itself  if  it  seeks  to  become  aggressively 
evangelistic,  and  that  in  them  we  may  perceive  the  Pelagian 
system  running  out  into  its  appropriate  methods.  Joseph 
Ives  Foot  describes  Finney's  revivals  therefore  frankly  from 
this  point  of  view.79     "These  doctrines,  with  a  correspond- 

77  The    Biblical   Repertory    and    Theological    Rerieic,    October    1835, 
p.   656. 

78  Ibid,  p.  614. 

79  The  Literary  and  Theological  Review,  March   1838,  p.   70,  article 


34  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

ing  system  of  measures,  were  driven  like  a  hurricane  through 
the  churches.     To  resist  this  operation  was  to  resist  God. 
Conscientious    Christians   gave   place   till   they   should   see 
what  it  was.    Timorous  ones  were  attached  to  his  triumphal 
car,  while  the  bold  and  the  ignorant  seized  the  reins  and  the 
whip;  and  hundreds  and  thousands  under  these  various  in- 
fluences, were  led  to  believe  themselves  converted  and  were 
immediately  driven  into  the  church.     These  services  were 
called  revivals;  and  thus  the  very  name  of  the  operations 
of  divine  grace  was  brought  under  suspicion."     It  is  from 
the  same  point  of  view  that  Charles  D.  Pigeon  writes  with 
a  somewhat  broader  reference  :80    "We  look  upon  the  course 
of  Mr.  Finney  as  particularly  instructive.     He  of  all  others 
has  taught  the  New  Haven  theology  in  its  greatest  purity 
and  has  ventured  to  push  the  principle  to  its  legitimate  re- 
sults.   Those  parts  of  New  York  which  have  been  the  scene 
of  his  labors  are  giving  and  will  long  continue  to  give  the 
most  instructive  lessons  as  to  the  nature  of  that  system  of 
doctrine    and    its    influence    on    individual    character    and 
religious  institutions."     And  it  is  still  from  the  same  point 
of  view  that  Samuel  J.  Baird  places  at  the  head  of  the  very 
instructive  chapter  in  which  he  gives  an  account  of  "the 
Western    Revivals"    the    descriptive    title    of     "Practical 
Pelagianism,"  and  brings  the  chapter  to  a  close  with  these 
words  :81    "Such  were  the  fruits,  widely  realized  in  Western 
New  York,  from  the  New  Haven  theology.     They  were  its 
legitimate  and   proper   results.     The  good  taste,  common 
sense  and  piety  of  many  of  the  disciples  of  that  school  may 
revolt   from  these  exhibitions,  and  pause  before  adopting 
them  in  their  full  development.     But  the  practical  system 
of  Finney,  Burchard,  Myrick  and  their  compeers  was  de- 
duced from  the  theology  of  New  Haven,  by  a  logic  which 
no  ingenuity  can  evade." 

It  will  not  have  escaped  observation  that  the  writers  we 

entitled.  Influence  of  Pelagianism  on  the  Theological  Course  of  Rev. 
C.  G.  Finney,  developed  in  his  Sermons  and  Lectures." 

80  The  Literary  and  Theological  Review,  March  1838,  p.  70. 

R1  A  History  <>f  ///.'  New  School,  [868,  pp.  217-234 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  35 

have  last  quoted  assume  that  "the  Western  Revivals"  were 
already  generally  understood  to  have  been  far  from  suc- 
cessful, as  judged  by  their  ultimate  fruits.  That  indeed 
was  the  case.  We  have  already  seen  that  Finney  him- 
self came  in  the  end  to  a  recognition  of  this  unhappy  fact. 
It  will  cause  no  surprise  that  he  should  become  wearied  with 
this  unfruitful  work.  Already  in  1832  he  was  looking  back 
upon  this  portion  of  his  career  as  a  closed  page  of  doubtful 
success,  and  was  consciously  seeking  a  new  phase  of 
activity.  He  was  yet  to  do  a  great  deal  of  evangelistic 
work ;  but,  although  he  threw  the  circle  of  his  labors  wider 
and  wider,  even  across  the  seas,  he  thought  of  himself  as 
no  longer  an  evangelist — he  had  become  a  pastor.82  His 
own  account  of  the  change  is  as  follows.83  "I  had  become 
fatigued,  as  I  had  labored  about  ten  years  as  an  evangelist, 
without  anything  more  than  a  few  days  or  weeks  of  rest 
during  the  whole  period.  .  .  .  We  had  three  children, 
and  I  could  not  well  take  my  family  with  me,  while  labor- 
ing as  an  evangelist.  My  strength,  too,  had  become  a  good 
deal  exhausted;  and  on  praying  and  looking  the  matter 
over,  I  concluded  that  I  would  accept  the  call  from  the 
Second  Free  Church  and  labor,  for  a  time  at  least,  in  New 
York."  By  this  action  Finney  became  a  part  of  a  movement 
then  making  in  the  Presbyterian  churches  of  New  York  to 
reach  the  people  by  the  establishment  of  "free"  churches, 
that  is,  churches  with  no  pew-rentals  and  otherwise  adapted 
to  attract  and  hold  the  unchurched  masses.838  In  this  way 
he  gave  to  his  pastorate  a  genuinely  evangelistic  character. 
The  church  over  which  he  was  settled  was  a  Presbyterian 
church,  and  Finney  had  always  been  a  Presbyterian.  It  was 
in  the  Presbyterian  Church  that  he  was  converted,  licensed, 

82  Memoirs,  p.  94 :  "I  have  been  a  pastor  now  for  many  years,  ever 
since  1832."  How  completely  Finney  felt  he  had  broken  with  his 
past  we  have  already  seen  (above  p.  3  and  note  4). 

83  Pp.  318  f. 

83'  An  interesting  "History  of  the  Free  Churches  in  the  City  of 
New  York,"  by  one  of  the  prime  movers  in  their  establishment,  Louis 
Tappan,  may  be  read  in  the  appendix  to  Reed  and  Matheson's  Narrative 
of  a  Visit  to  the  American  Churches,  etc.  1835,  Vol.  II,  341-353. 


36  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

ordained ;  it  was  under  its  authorization  that  he  had  pursued 
his  whole  work  as  an  evangelist,  and  the  region  in  which 
he  had  pursued  his  chief  revivalistic  enterprises  was  a  dis- 
tinctively Presbyterian  region :  and  now  he  was  settled  as 
pastor  over  a  Presbyterian  church.  But  Finney  was  noth- 
ing less  than  a  Presbyterian.  The  church  of  which  he  was 
pastor — as  were  all  the  Free  Presbyterian  Churches — was 
under  the  care  of  the  Third  Presbytery  of  New  York,  an 
"elective-affinity"  Presbytery,  as  little  Presbyterian  as  any- 
thing could  be  which  was  willing  to  bear  the  name.  Still, 
there  was  friction  over  matters  of  discipline  and  the  like ; 
and  Finney  felt  uncomfortable  in  his  harness.  His  friends 
accordingly  built  a  new  church  for  him — the  "Broadway 
Tabernacle" — which  they  organized  as  a  Congregationalist 
church.  Of  this  church  he  took  charge  in  the  autumn  of 
1834.  He  did  not  take  his  dismission  from  the  Presbytery, 
however,  until  the  spring  of  1836,  after  he  had  been  at 
Oberlin  for  a  year,  and  was  on  the  point  of  returning  thither 
for  his  second  session.84  What  led  him  thus  tardily  to 
sever  his  connection  with  a  church  with  which  he  had  so 
little  in  common  we  can  only  conjecture.  Perhaps  the  pro- 
cess of  writing  his  theological  lectures  at  Oberlin  quickened 
his  consciousness  both  as  to  the  significance  of  matters  of 
faith  in  church  relations  and  as  to  the  complete  dissonance 
of  his  own  beliefs  with  those  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  of 
which  he  was  still  an  accredited  teacher. 

He  had  not  been  left  without  pointed  reminders  of  the 
falseness  of  the  position  which  he  occupied.  So  soon  as  his 
Sermons  on  Various  Subjects  (1834)  and  Lectures  on  Re- 


8*The  records  of  the  Third  Presbytery  of  New  York  concerning 
Finney's  case  tell  that,  "on  the  14th  of  February  1832  the  Second  Free 
Church  (Chatham  Street  Chapel),  composed  chiefly  of  members  from 
the  First  Free  Church,  was  organized,  and  on  the  28th  of  September 
the  Rev.  Charles  G.  Finney  was  installed  pastor.  .  .  On  the  2d  of 
March,  1836,  Dr.  Finney  was  released"  (S.  D.  Alexander,  The  I'rrs- 
bytery  of  New  York,  1738  to  1888,  1887,  p.  107).  This  Second  Free 
Church  became  a  Congregationalist  Church  June  13,  1836,  and  Asa 
Malum  tellfl  lis  (Autobiography,  pp.  227)  that  Finney's  immediate  suc- 
cessor in  the  pulpit  made  shipwreck  of  his  faith. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  37 

rivals  of  Religion  (1835)  had  been  published  this  had  be- 
come glaring  and  created  an  open  scandal.  He  was  called 
upon  publicly  to  withdraw  from  a  church  in  which  he  was  so 
patently  out  of  place.  Albert  B.  Dod,  for  example,  in  July 
1835,  closes  his  review  of  his  Sermons  with  an  expression 
of  thanks  to  him  "for  the  substantial  service  he  has  done  the 
church"  in  them,  "by  exposing  the  naked  deformity  of  the 
Xew  Divinity/'  and  then  adds :  "He  can  render  her  still  an- 
other service,  and  in  rendering  it  perform  only  his  plain  duty, 
by  leaving  her  communion  and  finding  one  within  which  he 
can  preach  and  publish  his  opinions  without  making  war 
upon  the  standards  in  which  he  has  solemnly  professed  his 
faith."85  In  closing,  in  the  following  October,  his  review  of 
the  Lectures  on  Revivals,  Dod  returns  to  the  subject  and  in- 
sists on  Finney's  duty  to  leave  the  church.  "It  is  an  instruc- 
tive illustration  of  the  fact  that  fanaticism  debilitates  the 
conscience,"  he  now  says,88  "that  this  man  can  doubt  the 
piety  of  any  one  who  uses  coffee,  and  call  him  a  cheat  who 
sends  a  letter  to  another,  on  his  own  business,  without  pay- 
ing the  postage,  when  he  remains,  apparently  without  re- 
morse, with  the  sin  of  broken  vows  upon  him.  In  this  posi- 
tion we  leave  him  before  the  public.  Nor  will  we  withdraw 
our  charges  against  him,  until  he  goes  out  from  among  us, 
for  he  is  not  of  us."  We  know  nothing,  of  course,  of  the 
effect  of  such  challenges  on  Finney's  action;  but  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  he  withdrew  from  the  Church  immediately 
(within  six  months)  after  they  were  made.  Perhaps  it 
should  be  added  as  illustrating  the  lightness  with  which 
Finney  regarded  the  obligations  of  his  doctrinal  professions, 
that,  according  to  his  own  account,  he  had  originally  in- 
curred those  obligations  without  informing  himself  of  what 
he  was  committing  himself  to.  In  describing  his  licensure,87 
he  records:  "Unexpectedly  to  myself  they  asked  me  if  I 
received  the  confession  of  faith  of  the  Presbyterian  church. 
I  had  not  examined  it, — that  is,  the  large  work  containing 

85  Biblical  Repertory  and    Theological  Review,   July    1835,   p.   527. 
*«Ib\d,  October  1835,  p.  674. 
87  Memoirs,  p.  51. 


38  THE  PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

the  catechism  and  confession.  This  had  made  no  part  of 
my  study.  I  replied  that  I  received  it  for  substance  of 
doctrine,  so  far  as  I  understood  it.  But  I  spoke  in  a  way 
that  plainly  implied,  I  think,  that  I  did  not  pretend  to  know 
much  about  it.  However,  I  answered  honestly,  as  I  under- 
stood it  at  the  time."  Amid  the  curiously  interlaced  quali- 
fications and  explanations  of  this  statement,  it  only  emerges 
that  Finney  was  not  unaware  of  the  character  of  his  action. 
Under  its  cover,  he  for  a  dozen  years  flouted  the  doctrines 
he  had  been  placed  by  it  under  obligation  to  propagate. 

During  all  these  dozen  years  Finney  had  been  a  wanderer 
on  the  face  of  the  earth,  doing  the  work  of  an  evangelist. 
Even  during  the  four  years  of  his  stay  in  New  York,  he 
did  not  stay  in  New  York.  He  had  accepted  the  pastorate 
offered  to  him  there  as  a  means  toward  securing  a  more 
settled  mode  of  existence ;  and  in  impaired  health  and  de- 
pression of  spirits  he  was  obviously  still  longing  for  peace 
and  a  quiet  life.  It  was  in  this  mood  that  the  proposal  to 
go  to  Oberlin  found  him;  and  it  was  in  this  mood  that  he 
accepted  it.  He  was  in  the  prime  of  life,  and  the  event 
shows  that  his  amazing  vigor  was  unimpaired.  His  real 
career  was  indeed  just  opening  before  him;  forty  years  re- 
mained to  him  in  which  he  was  "Oberlin's  central  spiritual 
force  and  most  eminent  representative."88  The  pulpit,  the 
lecture  hall,  the  press,  were  now  the  instruments  with  which 
he  wrought,  and  with  all  alike  he  wrought  with  the  hand  of 
a  master-workman.  It  is  possible,  to  be  sure,  to  exaggerate 
here.  "In  intellectual  insight  into  the  deepest  realities  of 
religion,  in  originality  of  treatment  and  in  logical  power," 


88  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story  of  Oberlin,  1898,  p.  60,  cf.  p.  278  f. : 
"Beyond  comparison  his  was  the  chief  personal  force  upon  the  colonial 
tract.  The  pulpit  was  the  throne  from  which  Sunday  after  Sunday, 
for  more  than  a  generation,  he  swayed  vast  audiences.  .  .  .  For  forty 
years  his  lectures  on  theology  were  given,  and  in  addition,  1852-1858, 
he  filled  the  chair  of  intellectual  and  moral  philosophy.  For  fifteen 
years,  1851-1865,,  he  was  Oberlin's  executive  head.  .  .  .  Through  his 
sermons,  lectures  and  letters  published  in  The  (Oberlin)  Evangelist, 
and  elsewhere,  a  vast  influence  was  wielded.  Some  of  his  books  sold 
literally  by  the  hundred  thousand." 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  39 

writes  Albert  Temple  Swing,89  "President  Finney  is  to  be 
ranked  side  by  side  with  Edwards :  they  are  the  two  greatest 
American  theologians."  This  is  only  one  of  those  pro- 
vincial judgments  which  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  satirizes 
when  he  says  that  every  village  has,  somewhere  on  its  lawns, 
the  biggest  tree  in  the  world.  We  must  manage  to  see  over 
the  rim  of  the  dell  within  the  limits  of  which  our  experiences 
are  wrought  out.  But  certainly  it  must  be  recognized  that 
Finney  was  "the  greatest  mind  and  the  regulating  force  in 
the  development  of  Oberlin  theology."90  He  was  blessed 
with  coadjutors  of  a  high  order  of  talent.  But  it  was  to 
him  that,  above  all  others,  Oberlin  owed  the  measure  of 
greatness  which  it  achieved. 

The  contrast  between  the  pictures  of  the  religious  con- 
ditions obtaining  in  Central  and  Western  New  York  during 
the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  received  from 
the  accounts  which  Finney  and  Asa  Mahan  respectively 
give  of  their  early  years,  is  nothing  less  than  startling.  The 
two  lives  ran  on  very  closely  parallel  lines.  Both  men  spent 
their  early  boyhood  in  Oneida  County — in  hamlets  only 
a  few  miles  distant  from  one  another.  The  later  youth  of 
both  was  passed  in  the  wilder  West.  Yet  the  religious  con- 
ditions in  which  the  two  grew  up  are  described  by  them 
very  differently.  All  the  religious  advantages  which  Finney 
represents  himself  as  lacking,  Mahan  represents  himself  as 
possessing.  He  was  born  and  bred  in  a  pious  household, 
and  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  religious  influences.  His 
father,  to  be  sure,  was  not,  in  his  son's  judgment  at  least, 
a  thoroughly  consecrated  man.  But  his  mother  was  a 
deeply  religious  woman  with  an  aura  of  devoutness  hanging 
always  about  her.  It  was  a  Bible-reading,  praying  family, 
in  which  the  religious  books  that  to  Finney  were  inaccessible 
lay  always  at  hand.  The  Church  was  at  the  door,  and  the 
ministrations  of  the  sanctuary  were  constantly  enjoyed : 
if  there  was  formal  preaching  only  an  alternate  Sabbaths, 

89  The  BibUotheca  Sacra,  July,   1901,   p.   480  f. 

90  Frank  Hugh  Foster,  A    Genetic    History    of    the    New    England 
Theology,   1907,  p.  453- 


40  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

service  was  held  every  Sabbath;  and  when  sermons  were 
not  preached  by  ministers,  they  were  read  by  laymen.  The 
house  was  the  resort  of  itinerant  ministers,  and  the  whole 
neighborhood  was  full  of  Christian  people  ready  to  give 
Christian  succor.  One  rubs  his  eyes  and  wonders  if  this 
can  be  the  same  country-side  in  which  Finney  found  little 
that  pretended  to  be  religious,  and  nothing  that  pretended 
to  be  religious  that  was  not  also  absurd.  To  such  an  ex- 
tent, it  seems,  does  varying  personality  color  the  aspect  of 
surroundings,  and  even  by  a  process  of  selection  mould 
them  into  harmony  with  itself. 

Mahan  was  a  few  years  Finney's  junior,  and,  although 
he  found  his  way  into  the  ministry  at  a  somewhat  younger 
age  than  Finney,  he  had  had  a  shorter — and  a  far  less  stir- 
ring and  notable — ministerial  experience  than  Finney,  when 
they  came  together  at  Oberlin.  He  was  born  November  9, 
1799,91  at  Vernon,  Oneida  County,  New  York,  a  hamlet 
some  sixteen  miles  west  of  Utica  and  about  half  that  dis- 
tance from  Kirkland,  Finney's  boyhood  home,  with  which  it 
had  easy  communication  over  the  famous  "Genesee  Turn- 
pike."92 Here  he  was  bred  in  what  he  calls93  "  'the  strictest 
sect'  of  the  Calvinistic  faith,"  and  was  surrounded  both  in 
his  home  and  in  the  church  life  into  which  he  was  carried  as 
a  matter  of  course,  with  constant  religious  influences.  These 
had  no  more  effect  upon  him,  however,  than  that  he  grew 
up  a  boy  of  good  habits  and  excellent  character.  When  he 
was  about  twelve  years  of  age  the  family  removed  to  the 
West — to  Orangeville,  Wyoming  County,  four  miles  from 
Warren  and  some  forty  miles  southwest  of  Rochester.  The 
change  of  residence,  however,  brought  no  essential  change 

91  So  Mahan  himself  repeatedly  says  (e.g.  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light, 
1874,  p.  1  ;  Autobiography,  1881,  p.  1).  On  the  other  hand  the  Encyclo- 
paedias (Applet on  s  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Biography,  Johnson's 
Universal  Cyclopaedia,  The  New  S  chaff -Hcrzog  Encyclopaedia  of 
Religious  Knowledge)  uniformly  give  the  date  as  1800. 

92  For  this  turnpike  and  its  significance  see  in  O'Callaghan's  Docu- 
mentary History  of  the  State  of  New  York,  vol.  II,  p.  1142,  1165L 
For  the  state  of  things  west  of  Utica  in  1792,  see  p.  1131. 

93  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  p.  9. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  41 

in  the  boy's  inner  life  or  his  external  carriage.  He  lived  in 
his  new  home,  too,  as  a  member  of  a  religious  household 
would  be  expected  to  live,  taking  part  in  all  the  religious 
activities  of  the  community;  but  withal,  he  was  still  destitute 
of  religious  experiences  of  his  own.  He  was  known,  how- 
ever, as  a  young  man  of  sterling  character  and  irreproach- 
able conduct.  And  so  it  came  about,  that  when  his  own 
schooling  was  completed,  he  was  "on  account  of  his  well- 
known  attainments  and  moral  reputation,"94  "selected  to 
teach  school  in  one  of  the  most  Christian,  moral  and  in- 
telligent districts  in  all  the  region  round."  Here,  when  he 
had  entered  by  a  few  months  into  his  eighteenth  year 
(1816),  he  was  led  during  the  progress  of  a  revival,  to  give 
his  heart  to  God.95  His  conversion,  as  he  describes  it,  was 
as  distinctively  supernaturalistic  as  Finney's:  "if  not 
miraculous,  yet  altogether  supernatural,"  is  the  somewhat 
odd  phrase  with  which  he  describes  it,  drawing  at  the  same 
time  a  parallel  between  it  and  that  of  Colonel  Gardiner,  un- 
derstood by  him  to  be  the  result  of  a  miraculous  interven- 
tion.96 He  represents  himself97  as  praying  that  he  'might 
be  kept  from  ever  returning  to  that  state  of  aliena- 
tion from  God  in  which  his  life  had  been  spent"  hitherto. 
And,  "I  had  no  sooner  pronounced  these  words,"  he  says, 
"when  I  was  consciously  encircled  'in  the  everlasting 
arms.'  "  This  was  a  prayer  for  "perseverance"  and  it 
seems  to  be  implied  that  it  was  granted  and  that  a  pledge 
was  given  him  of   its  granting,   in  a  tangible  response.98 

94  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  p.  28. 

95  P.  9. 

96  Autobiography,  p.  50. 

97  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  pp.  1-13. 

98  On  p.  28  however  he  seems  to  assign  his  attainment  of  assurance 
of  "perseverance"  to  a  somewhat  later,  though  apparently  not  greatly 
later,  date :  "At  length  I  attained  to  a  full  assurance  that  I  was  not 
only  then  an  accepted  servant  of  Christ,  but  should  have  grace  to  con- 
tinue such  even  unto  the  end.  In  this  assurance  I  have  done  service 
for  Christ  up  to  this  period.  Not  a  stain  of  doubt  rests  upon  my  mind 
that  I  am  His  for  eternity."  On  this  basis  he  rejects  the  "moment  by 
moment"  teaching  of  most  Higher  Life  teachers  and  declares  that  ac- 
cording to  Scripture  we  are  "to  exercise  present  faith"  both  for  "pres- 
ent" and  for  "future  sanctification." 


42  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  this,  it  was  not,  any  more 
than  Finney's,  a  conversion  according  to  the  Pelagianizing 
prescriptions  of  the  "New  Divinity." 

For  some  months  after  his  conversion,  Mahan  tells  us,80 
his  "spiritual  state  was  rather  of  a  negative  than  positive 
character";  by  which  he  appears  to  mean  that  his  thoughts 
were  rather  on  the  privileges  that  his  new  relation  to  God 
had  brought  him  than  on  service.  That,  however,  was  soon 
corrected;  and  he  gave  himself  with  diligence  not  only 
to  prepare  himself  for  the  ministry  but  to  improve  his 
opportunities  to  bring  souls  to  Christ.  In  consequence,  not 
only  did  he  have  trophies  to  show,  in  the  favorable  situation 
in  which  he  was  at  the  time,  but  having  removed  for  his 
next  winter's  teaching  to  a  very  ungodly  neighborhood,  he 
built  up  a  church  there  of  from  thirty  to  fifty  members.99* 
As  years  passed  on,  however,  he  lost  the  "inward  peace  and 
joy  in  God  which  his  first  love  had  induced,"100  and 
passed  into  a  condition  which  he  speaks  of  as  "twilight," 
and  in  which  he  continued  for  no  less  than  eighteen  years — 
in  fact  up  to  his  discovery  of  "perfection"  as  the  proper  state 
of  the  Christian,  at  Oberlin,  in  1836.  "Twilight"  is  merely 
his  name,  accordingly,  for  the  condition  of  the  "ordinary 
Christian."  He  does  not  think  of  denying  that  this  "semi- 
twilight  of  a  semi-faith"  is  a  "genuine  form  of  Christian  ex- 
perience," as  genuine  a  form  of  it  as  "the  sunlight"  itself.101 
In  both  states  alike  he  had  sin,  and  understood  that  every 
deliberate  sin  committed  deserved  death.  But  the  two  states 
were  characterized  by  different  "sentiments  and  expecta- 
tions" with  reference  to  sin.102  In  the  one  he  expected  to 
sin :  in  the  other  he  had  no  expectation  of  sinning.  And,  he 
adds,108  "in  each,  my  experience  fully  accorded  with  my 
faith" — a  sentence  which  contradictorily  to  the  preceding 

89  P.  18. 
••"  P.  20. 

100  P.  90. 

101  Autobiography,  p.  261 ;  cf.  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  p.  98. 

™2  P.  284. 
103  P.  285. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  43 

statement,  seems  to  assert  the  enjoyment  in  the  later  state 
of   actual   "perfection."        It   was   "in   the   twilight"   then 
that   he   lived   out   his  life  up  to   his  great   experience   at 
Oberlin.     He  soon  set  his  heart,    however,  on  the  ministry 
and  began  active  preparation  for  it.     There  were  two  years 
of  preparatory  study;  then  four  years  at  Hamilton  College 
from  which  he  was  graduated  in  1824;  and  then  three  years 
at  Andover  Seminary,   from  which  he  was  graduated  in 
1827.     Henry  Davis  was  President  of   Hamilton  College 
during  his  time ;  at  Andover  he  came  under  the  instruction 
of  Leonard  Woods  and  Moses  Stuart — from  the  latter  of 
whom  he  learned  at  least  how  to  deal  with  the  seventh 
chapter  of  Romans  so  that  it  would  interpose  no  obstacle 
to  his  later  theories.     He  paints  the  general  conditions  at 
Andover  in  almost  as  dark  colors  as  John  Humphrey  Noyes 
does  a  few  years  later.     He  does  not  hint  at  any  impro- 
prieties of  conduct:     "There  was  nothing  morally  impure 
about  it."     But  he  found  no  great  spirituality:     "Never 
was  I  in  an  atmosphere  less  morally  and  spiritually  vitalizing 
than  that  which  encircled  me  during  those  three  years."104 
Leaving    Andover,    he    became    a  candidate  under  the 
charge   of  the   Presbytery   of   Oneida,   occupying   himself 
meanwhile    in     "agencies     and    miscellaneous    ministerial 
duties,"  as  he  puts  it.105     Soon,  however,  he  found  himself 
back  in  the  West,  and  "commenced  work  in  the  city  of 
Rochester,  with  the  expectation  of  organizing  a  new  church 
there."106     "Just  as  the  organization  was  being  effected," 
however,  he  "was  suddenly  stricken  down  by  an  attack  of 
inflammatory  rheumatism   in  both   knees  and   ankles    and 
his    left    wrist."     He  was  taken    to    his    father's    house 
in  Orangeville,    ("where,"   says  he,   "my  youth  had  been 
spent") ;  but  even  in  his  illness  he  could  not  be  idle.     He 
found  the  church  there  in  a  most  deplorable  state.107     He 

104  Autobiography,  p.  144. 

105  P.  155. 
10«P.  167. 

107  This  was  probably  in   1828.     The  church  at  Orangeville  after  a 
period  of  vacancy  had  enjoyed  the  service  of  a  Stated  Supply  in  1826, 


44  THE   PRINCETON*  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

caused  himself  to  be  carried  to  it  Sunday  after  Sunday  in  a 
chair,  and  preached  from  the  chair  "for  about  three  months." 
The  result  was  a  revival  in  which  he  had  the  happiness  of 
seeing  his  own  father  brought  to  Christ.  "Among  the 
converts  was  my  aged  father.  He  had  professed  religion 
from  my  childhood,  but  was  manifestly  a  total  stranger  to 
the  grace  of  God."108  When  he  was  able  to  undertake  reg- 
ular work  again,  he  became  "pastor-elect  of  the  Congre- 
gational church  at  Pittsford,  near  Rochester,"109  and  duly 
appears  in  the  Minutes  of  the  General  Assembly  for  1830 
as  a  member  of  the  Presbytery  of  Rochester  and  pastor  at 
Pittsford.110  His  tenure  of  this  charge  was,  however,  very 
brief.  He  had  already  left  it  in  time  to  be  reported  to  the 
General  Assembly  of  1831  as  without  charge;  and  by  Aug- 
ust 1 83 1  he  had  removed  to  Cincinnati  to  take  the  oversight 
of  a  new  venture,  called  then  the  Sixth  Presbyterian  Church, 
but  soon  afterward  to  become  the  Vine  Street  Congrega- 
tionalist  Church.  He  "commenced  his  labors  with  this 
church,"  he  tells  us,111  "on  August  29th,  183 1  and  resigned 
May  1,  1835" — serving  it  therefore  somewhat  less  than 
four  years.  The  church  consisted  at  the  beginning  of  only 
sixteen  members  "who  lived  in  the  city  and  worshipped 
with  us" ;  but  towards  the  end  of  his  stay  with  it,  it  was 
largely  increased :  seventy-four  were  added  on  examination 
in  1834,  and  in  the  course  of  eight  months'  time  upwards 
of  a  hundred.  Throughout  the  whole  period  of  Mahan's 
stay  with  it,  it  worshiped  in  a  hired  hall,  "and,"  he  adds,  "a 

and  was  vacant  again  in  1827  and  1828,  obtaining  a  Stated  Supply  in 
1829  (General  Assembly  Minutes,  pp.  63,  182,  284,  460). 

108  Autobiography,  p.    168. 

109  Pittsford,  Monroe  Co.,  N.  Y.,  eight  miles  southeast  of  Rochester. 

110  His  record  in  the  Minutes  runs  thus:  1829  (his  first  appearance), 
candidate  of  the  Presbytery  of  Oneida:  1830,  pastor  at  Pittsford,  Pres- 
bytery of  Rochester;  1831,  W.  C.  Presbytery  of  Rochester;  1832,  S.  S. 
Sixth  Church  at  Cincinnati;  1833,  W.  C.  of  the  Presbytery  of  Cin- 
cinnati (the  Sixth  church  vacant)  ;  1834,  S.  S.  Sixth  Church,  to  which 
arc  assigned  134  members — the  only  statistics  of  the  church's  member- 
ship in  the  entries;  1835,  Asa  Mahan's  name  no  longer  appears,  and 
Herman  Norton  is  given  as  pastor  of  the  Sixth  Church. 

111 .  iutobiography,  p.  163. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM 


45 


very  plain  one  at  that."  He  was  never  really  settled  over  it 
as  its  pastor,  and  even  his  service  to  it  as  "stated  supply" 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  uninterrupted.112 

These  details  have  been  recited  in  order  that  the  extent 
and  nature  of  Mahan's  ministerial  experience  before  going 
to  Oberlin  in  1835  may  be  estimated.  From  his  graduation 
at  Andover  in  1827  to  his  arrival  at  Oberlin  some  eight 
years  had  elapsed,  but  little  more  than  half  of  these  had 
been  spent  in  the  actual  care  of  a  church,  and  for  barely  a 
single  year  had  he  sustained  the  office  of  pastor.  In  determ- 
ining the  value  of  his  experiences,  such  work  as  he  did  at 
Rochester  in  gathering  together  the  nucleus  of  a  church,  and 
at  Orangeville  in  leading  a  revival  movement,  must  not  be 
underestimated.  Immediately  on  settling  in  Cincinnati, 
also,  he  was  elected  a  Trustee  and  a  member  of  the  Pruden- 
tial Board  of  Lane  Seminary,  and  this  brought  him  into 
active  participation  in  the  broader  work  of  the  church ;  and 
indeed  thrust  him  at  once  into  the  focus  of  the  most  hotly 
debated  national  question  of  the  day — that  which  con- 
cerned slavery.  With  it  all  it  must  be  said,  however,  that 
his  ministerial  experience  had  been  exceedingly  small  and 
very  narrow. 

Meanwhile  he  had  not  maintained  intact  the  faith  in 
which  he  was  bred.  That  was,  he  tells  us — speaking  of 
course  from  the  New  England  point  of  view,113 — "  'the 
straitest  sect'  of  the  Calvinistic  faith."  From  the  very  be- 
ginning of  his  personal  religious  life,  however,  this  heredi- 
tary Calvinism  had  begun  to  crumble.  Of  the  imputation 
of  Adam's  sin,114  he  declares  that  "subsequently  to  his  con- 
version, he  never  for  a  moment  entertained  that  sentiment"  : 
and  he  adds115  that  he  "quite  early"  adopted  the  "universal 
atonement."116     In  a  broader  statement,  he  informs  us  that 


112  In  the  Minnies  of    1833  Mahan  is  listed  as   without  charge  and 
the  church  as  vacant. 

113  Autobiography,  p.  320. 

114  P.  199. 

115  P.  200. 

116  In  later  life  he  distinguished  between   three  opinions  on  the  ex- 


46  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

from  the  commencement  of  his  ministry  he  "rejected  the 
Old  School  and  Hopkinsian  theories,  and  adopted  and  be- 
came a  zealous  advocate  of  that  of  divine  efficiency."  Per- 
haps his  drift  had  not  gone  much  further  than  this  when 
he  went  to  Oberlin.  His  going  to  Oberlin  marks,  however, 
the  beginning  of  a  completer  revolution  in  his  faith,  a 
revolution  which  he  represents,  in  a  statement  which  defines 
it  by  the  widest  limits,  as  carrying  him  "from  the  extreme 
bounds  of  Calvinism" — that  is  the  way  he  expressed  the 
faith  in  which  he  had  been  bred — "to  the  quite  opposite 
pole  of  the  evangelical  faith" — which  is  his  description  of 
his  ultimate  point  of  view.117  This  ultimate  point  of  view 
he  describes  again  as  "the  antipodes  of  all  the  peculiarities 
of  the  Calvinistic  faith."118  His  mind  here  is  chiefly  on 
the  question  of  liberty  and  ability,  and,  accordingly,  he 
expresses  elsewhere  the  revolution  in  faith  which  he  suf- 
fered as  "changing  fundamentally  his  life-long  and  fondly 
cherished  beliefs,  and  repudiating  utterly  the  doctrine  of 
necessity  and  adopting  that  of  liberty."119  What  he  means 
is  that  he  rejected  the  whole  conception  of  natural  and 
moral  inability  and  adopted  in  its  stead  a  doctrine  of 
plenary  ability;120  or,  to  put  it  more  sharply,  that  he  now 
took  up  with  the  notion  that  obligation  is  limited  by  ability, 
a  notion  which,  he  rightly  says,  compelled  an  entire  re- 
construction   of    his    theology.121      It    seems    to    be    clear 

tent  of  the  Atonement,  e.g.,  Christian  Perfection  (1839)  P-  26  f. : — (1) 
Limited  Atonement,  "Christ  died  for  a  part  only  of  the  human  race — 
the  elect,"  (2)  General  Atonement, — "Christ  died  for  no  individuals 
of  our  race  in  particular,  but  for  all  in  general,"  (3)  Special  atone- 
ment, "Christ  died  for  everyone  in  particular" — so  much  for  each  that 
it  might  seem  to  him  that  it  was  for  him  alone  that  he  died.  It  is  the 
third  that  Mahan  makes  his  own.  But  he  modified  it  so  as  to  escape 
universal  salvation  by  saying  that  although  Christ  died  for  each,  he 
avails  only  for  those  who  accept  him.  We  do  not  get  the  full  flavor 
of  this  fervent  individualism  of  Christ's  death  until  we  recall  that  the 
theory  0!  atonemenl  held  is  the  Rectoral! 

1 17  Autobiogrophy,  p.  viii. 

118  P.  320. 

ll*  Autobiography,  p.  204. 
«o  Pp.  203-4. 
"i  P.  214. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  47 

enough  that  this  fundamental  step  was  already  taken  be- 
fore going  to  Oberlin ;  so  that  he  began  his  work  there,  like 
Finney  and  his  other  colleagues,  as  a  zealous  preacher  of 
the  "New  Divinity."  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  there- 
fore the  accuracy  of  James  H.  Fairchild's  representation,122 
that  all  the  "founders"  of  Oberlin,  including  John  J.  Ship- 
herd,  and  not  only  Finney,  but  Mahan  and  Morgan  and 
Cowles,  held  to  "New  School  views,"  in  the  sense  that  they 
insisted  upon  "the  doctrine  of  human  ability."  "These 
men,"  he  says,  and  obviously  very  truly,  "were  all  earnest 
preachers  of  human  ability,  and  the  personal,  voluntary  re- 
sponsibility of  the  sinner  for  everything  about  him  that  can 
be  reckoned  as  sin." 

It  is  Fairchild  also  who  reminds  us123  that  the  gathering 
of  a  body  of  such  men  as  these  in  a  place  like  Oberlin,  neces- 
sarily concentrated  the  immense  personal  power  which  they 
represented,  specifically  on  the  cultivation  of  the  spiritual 
life.  Out  in  the  wide  world  their  energies  had  been  in- 
tensely directed  to  the  conversion  of  sinners :  here,  in  this 
narrow  sphere,  where  "there  was  only  here  and  there  a 
sinner  to  be  converted,"  they  were  naturally  diverted  to  the 
perfecting  of  the  saints.  Men  were  set  to  the  intensive  cul- 
tivation of  their  Christian  life;  and  the  preachers  pressed 
upon  them  with  all  the  insistence  that  had  been  employed  in 
the  whirlwind  revivals  from  which  they  had  come,  the 
duties  of  examining  themselves  whether  they  were  in  Christ 
and  of  immediate  completion  of  their  entire  consecration  to 
His  service.  "It  was  not  a  rare  thing,"  says  Fairchild,  "for 
a  large  portion  of  the  congregation,  after  a  searching  ser- 
mon by  Prof.  Finney  or  Pres.  Mahan,  to  rise  up  in  acknowl- 
edgment that  they  had  reason  to  apprehend  that  they  were 
deceived  as  to  their  Christian  character;  and  to  express 
their  determination  not  to  rest  until  their  feet  were  estab- 
lished upon  the  Rock."  It  is  almost  incredible  that  the 
preachers  did  not  realize  from  the  beginning  that  what  they 
were  demanding  from  their  hearers  was  sheer  perfection; 

122  The  Congregational  Quarterly,   April   1876,  p.  237. 

123  As  cited,  p.  238. 


48  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

and  that  what  they  were  preaching  was  mere  perfectionism. 
Perfection  was  men's  duty,  and  all  that  was  duty  was  prac- 
ticable— for  obligation  and  ability  are  co-extensive.  But 
we  must  remember  that  these  were  somewhat  reckless  men, 
who  made  it  a  virtue  not  to  count  costs ;  and  who  were 
accustomed  to  tear  every  passion  to  tatters  and  to  lash 
every  dawning  emotion  into  excesses  with  unmeasured  in- 
vective ;  pursuing  their  conceived  ends  without  regard  to  the 
inevitable  consequences  of  the  means  employed.  There  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  believe  them  when  they  tell 
us  that  they  were  unaware  that  they  were  demanding  per- 
fection of  their  hearers  as  an  achievable  duty,  until  their 
eyes  were  opened  to  it  by  their  hearers  themselves.  One  of 
the  odd  circumstances  connected  with  the  situation  was  that 
Finney  and  Mahan  knew  perfectly  well  what  perfectionism 
was.  They  had  lived  with  it  in  Central  and  Western  New 
York :  their  companions  in  their  evangelistic  work  there 
had  preached  it  in  their  presence :  their  followers  had  often 
rushed  headlong  into  it.  They  themselves  had  kept  their 
skirts  free  from  it;  partly,  no  doubt,  because  of  their  en- 
grossment with  the  prior  matter  of  conversion;  more,  no 
doubt,  because  of  the  mystical  and  antinomian  form  taken 
by  "the  New  York  Perfectionism,"  which  was  abhorrent  to 
them  as  preachers  of  righteousness.  But  they  could  not  help 
knowing  that  perfectionism  lay  at  their  door;  and  yet  they 
drove  on,  preaching  an  essential  perfectionism  without,  they 
say,  being  aware  of  it. 

Perfectionism  lay  at  their  door  even  in  the  literal,  physical 
sense.  Oberlin  was  not  so  isolated  as  to  be  insensible  to 
what  was  going  on  in  Central  and  Western  New  York,  or 
even  in  its  own  immediate  neighborhood,  in  the  Western 
Reserve  of  Ohio.  Its  settlers  were  recruited  from  the  class 
in  which  "New  York  Perfectionism"  was  prevalent;  and 
they  did  not  shed  their  memories  or  break  off  their  lines  of 
communication  when  they  came  to  Oberlin.  The  students 
of  theology,  to  whom  the  appeals  of  the  preachers  were  most 
frequently  addressed,  were  themselves  the  products — Mahan 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  49 

says  the  best  products — of  "The  Western  Revivals,"  and 
could  not  fail  to  be  familiar  with  their  constant  accompani- 
ments. Even  if  we  lacked  direct  evidence  of  contact,  there- 
fore, we  could  not  assume  that  Oberlin  perfectionism  arose 
wholly  apart  from  connection  with  the  wide-spread  per- 
fectionist movement  which  preceded  it  In  point  of  fact 
direct  evidence  is  not  lacking.  We  know  that,  in  the  quar- 
ters in  which  perfectionist  tendencies  first  showed  themselves 
at  Oberlin,  not  only  was  the  earlier  movement  known,  but 
the  Putney  literature  was  read  and  an  impulse  derived  from 
it  to  repeat  the  experiences  described  in  it.  It  served,  for 
instance,  "to  raise  the  question  of  obligation  as  to  the  degree 
of  holiness  which  Christians  might  obtain,"124  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1836  (the  second  session  of  the  Theological  Semi- 
nary), for  a  body  of  young  men  associated  in  a  missionary 
society  and  earnestly  engaged  upon  their  spiritual  culture 
in  preparation  for  their  prospective  work.  They  rejected 
with  decision  the  antinomian  features  of  the  teaching  they 
found  in  this  literature;  but,  under  its  influence,  they  ad- 
vanced, along  the  lines  of  the  "New  Divinity"  common  to 
it  and  themselves,  to  a  full  conviction  of  the  duty  and  pos- 
sibility of  completely  putting  away  sin.  A  fervid  con- 
secration meeting  was  held  by  them,  in  which  they  solemnly 
bound  themselves  not  to  grieve  their  Master  by  any  further 
sinning.  "They  left  the  meeting" — so  one  of  their  number 
records,125 — "feeling  that  they  were  pledged  to  a  life  of 
entire  obedience,  chiefly  from  the  side  of  duty — the  obliga- 
tion and  the  possibility  of  it."  Very  naturally,  and  very 
truly,  a  report  went  around  that  "the  missionary  society 
had  all  become  Perfectionists."  We  gather  that  the  step 
they  had  taken  met,  for  the  moment,  with  but  imperfect — 
certainly  not  with  universal — sympathy,  although  it  was 
the  only  logical  outcome  of  the  searching  preaching  to  which 
they  were  listening  day  by  day.  It  was  a  straw,  however, 
showing  which  way  the  wind  was  blowing ;  and  by  the  time 


124  Fairchild,  as  cited,  pp.  238-239. 

125  \\re  are  quoting  from  D.  L.  Leonard,  The  Story  of  Oberlin,  p.  238. 


5<D  THE   PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

the  session  then  in  progress  ended,  the  wind  was  blowing 
a  gale. 

The  preaching  itself  was  growing  ever  more  fervid  and 
insistent.  Mahan  represents  himself  as  burdened  in  spirit 
over  the  low  state  of  Christian  living,  and  earnestly  seeking 
light  on  the  great  problem  of  Christian  attainment.  One 
day,  he  visited  one  of  his  associates,  and  they  together 
sought  guidance  in  the  Word.  The  conversation  turned 
on  the  passage,  "The  love  of  Christ  constraineth  us." 
"While  thus  employed,"126  he  says,  "my  heart  leaped  up  in 
ecstacy  indescribable,  with  the  exclamation,  T  have  found 
it.'  "  What  he  had  found  was  that  Christ  is  all  in  all. 
"All  in  all;  for  in  Him  is  to  be  had  not  merely  our  justifica- 
tion, but  also  our  sanctification :  the  one  is  as  truly  a  gift 
of  grace,  as  exclusively  a  work  of  God,  as  the  other,  and  is 
to  be  had  on  the  same  condition."127  "The  highway  of  holi- 
ness was  now  for  the  first  time  distinct  in  my  mind  ...  ." 
We  may  perhaps  express  what  he  found  in  the  two  words, 
"Jesus  only."  In  Him,  he  perceived,  we  obtain  all  we  need ; 
and  we  must  go  to  Him  for  it  all,  and  receive  it  all  by  a 
direct  act  of  faith.  He  had  known  hitherto  what  to  do 
when  a  sinner  asked,  What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?  He 
would  say,  Go  to  Christ  in  faith.  But  he  had  not  known 
that  precisely  the  same  answer  is  to  be  given  to  the  believer 
who  wishes  to  be  delivered  from  his  low  plane  of  living. 
He  had  been  accustomed  to  instruct  such  "to  confess  their 
sins,  put  them  away,  renew  their  purpose  of  obedience,  and 
go  forward  with  a  fixed  resolution  to  do  the  entire  will  of 
God."128  He  now  saw  that  that  was  "a  fundamental  mis- 
take." We  are  not  only  to  be  justified  by  the  faith  of  Christ ; 
but  to  be  sanctified  also  by  'the  faith  that  is  in  Him.'  ' 
We  cannot  be  justified  by  faith,  and  be  sanctified  by  "re- 
solves" :  "we  must  cease  wholly  from  man  and  from  our- 
selves, and  trust  Christ  universally."  Along  with  this  new 
light  on  Christ  as  all  in  all,  he  now  saw  also  the  necessity 

126  Christian   Perfection    (1839)    ed.  7,   1844,  pp.   181  ff. 

127  Autobiography,  pp.  322  f. 

128  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  p.  140. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  5 1 

of  the  work  of  the  Spirit.  And  he  considers  it  remarkable 
that  "the  doctrine  of  Christ  as  our  'wisdom,  righteousness, 
sanctification  and  redemption'  and  the  'promise  of  the 
Spirit,'  as  the  great  central  truth  of  the  Gospel,"  should 
have  been  presented  to  his  mind  at  one  and  the  same  time."129 
Of  course,  however,  they  necessarily  go  together  because 
they  are  only  two  aspects  of  the  supernaturalness  of  sal- 
vation. 

For  exactly  what  happened  to  Mahan  in  this  great  ex- 
perience— this  experience  which  he  always  looked  back  upon 
as  pivotal  for  his  life, — was  the  rediscovery  of  the  super- 
naturalness  of  salvation.  In  this  aspect  of  it,  it  was  a  re- 
action from  the  emphasis  which,  as  a  preacher  of  the  "New 
Divinity,"  he  had  been  placing  on  "ability,"  and  a  return  to 
what  he  calls  "universal"  dependence  on  the  grace  of  Christ. 
He  says  himself130  that  the  teaching  stands  in  contrast  with 
his  talk,  "in  his  ignorance,"  of  "human  ability  to  do  all  that 
is  required  of  us,"  and  with  the  consequent  "trust  he  had 
put  in  his  own  resolutions."  This  seems  a  confession  that 
in  teaching  according  to  the  formulas  of  the  "New  Divinity" 
he  had  been  walking  in  a  Pelagian  path :  and,  so  far  as  there 
was  now  a  reaction  from  that  bad  way  of  thinking,  he  had 
turned  his  face  to  the  light,  and  ceasing  from  self-sufficiency 
had  put  his  dependence  in  God.  This  reaction,  most  com- 
mendable in  itself,  was  nevertheless,  as  actually  experienced 
by  him,  at  once  insufficient  and  excessive.  He  still  reserved 
faith  entirely  to  man;  he  wished  to  exclude  human  effort 
only  from  the  walk  in  Christ.  And  like  all  Christians 
of  his  class  he  could  not  conceive  of  truly  concursive  activ- 
ities. He  operated  with  an  unconditioned  either — or: 
either  works  or  grace;  either  effort  or  trust.  As  he  had 
formerly  allowed  no  place  for  faith  in  sanctification,  so 
now  he  did  not  wish  to  allow  any  place  for  effort  in  sancti- 
fication. He  seems  not  to  be  able  to  understand  that  we 
must  both  "work  and  pray,"  as  the  popular  maxim  puts  it; 

129  P.  147. 
180  P.  141. 


52  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

both  believe  and  labor;  he  wishes  us  to  "cast  all  the  respon- 
sibility" on  Christ  after  a  fashion  which  smacks  more  of 
mysticism  than  the  Gospel.181  Meanwhile  the  reader  is 
filled  with  amazement  that  this  discovery  of  the  supernat- 
uralness  of  salvation  should  have  seemed  something  new  to 
Mahan.  Bred  in  "  'the  straitest  sect'  of  Calvinism,"  did  he 
have  to  wait  for  this  moment  to  learn  that  Christ  is  all  in 
all;  that  in  Him  we  have  by  faith  all  that  we  can  need; 
that  He  is  made  to  us  sanctification  as  well  as  justification 
— yes,  all  that  is  included  in  redemption? 

Naturally  this  great  discovery  did  not  remain  inoperative 
in  Mahan's  life.  In  the  act  of  so  learning  Christ,  he  so 
experienced  Christ, — and  this  constituted  his  "second  con- 
version," in  which  he  seemed  to  himself  to  rise  into  a  higher 
plane  of  Christian  living,  and  passed,  as  he  loves  to  express 
it,  from  "twilight"  into  the  full  light  of  Christian  experience. 
It  is  interesting  to  observe,  as  he  explicitly  tells  us,  that 
when  he  communicated  his  new  experience  to  Finney,  it 
found  a  ready  welcome  with  him,  and  was  repeated  in  his 
experience.  "When  my  associate,  then  Professor  Finney," 
he  relates  in  one  characteristic  account,132  "became  aware  of 
the  great  truth  that,  by  being  'baptized  with  the  Holy 
Ghost,'  we  can  'be  filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God,'  he  of 
course  sought  that  baptism  with  all  his  heart  and  soul,  and 
very  soon  obtained  what  he  sought."  Finney  also  received 
therefore  at  this  time  "the  second  blessing" ;  and  not  Finney 
only;  the  doctrine,  the  experience,  was  contagious.  Of 
course  it  was  carried  at  once  also  into  the  preaching  and 
gave  it  an  added  insistence,  an  increased  ardor.  These  men 
and  their  preaching — whatever  they  or  it  had  been  before — 
now  became  definitely  perfectionist,  though  that  was  not 

131  In  his  Autobiography,  pp.  286  ff.,  he  tells  us  that  the  great  dif- 
ference between  the  two  points  of  view  which  had  been  successive  in 
his  life  turned  on  sanctification.  In  the  one  justification  is  held  to  be  by 
faith,  while  sanctification  is  by  hard  labor;  in  the  other  both  justifica- 
tion and  sanctification  are  purely  of  faith,  both  arc  wrought  by  God 
alone  and  when  we  claim  cither  by  faith — "our  responsibility  is  at  an 
end." 

132  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  p.  180. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  53 

yet  recognized.  Mahan  explains  their  position  by  the  use 
of  the  contrasting  adverbs  "theoretically"  and  "prac- 
tically."133 They  had  become  "practically"  perfectionists, 
he  says,  but  not  yet  "theoretically"  so.  By  this  he  does  not 
seem  to  mean  here  primarily  that  they  had  become  perfect 
and  did  not  yet  know  it — although  it  is  not  clear  that  that 
too  does  not  lie  in  his  meaning — but  that  they  had  adopted 
and  were  preaching  perfectionist  doctrine,  but  had  not  yet 
come  to  see  clearly  that  this  was  what  they  had  done.  The 
way  he  expresses  it  at  large  is  this:  "The  redemption  of 
Christ  was  then  presented  to  my  mind  as  full  and  perfect 
redemption.  I  felt  that  in  Christ  I  was  'complete,'  that  in 
Him  every  demand  of  my  being  was  met,  and  perfectly 
met.  In  this  light  I  presented  Him  to  others."  But  it  was 
only  "by  subsequent  reflection  that  I  became  aware  that 
the  principles  which  I  had  practically  adopted  necessarily 
involved  the  doctrine  of  Christian  perfection."  We  are  not 
now  concerned  with  the  defects  of  Mahan's  logical  pro- 
cesses. The  discovery  of  the  supernaturalness  of  salvation 
does  not  involve  exclusion  of  the  consumption  of  time  in 
the  realization  of  all  that  is  included  in  it.  But  we  have 
now  merely  to  note  that  this  was  not  perceived;  and  ac- 
cordingly what  Mahan  and  his  colleagues  had  come  to 
believe  and  were  now  fervidly  preaching  was  the  possibility 
and  duty  of  the  immediate  enjoyment  of  all  that  Christ  had 
bought  for  His  people,  at  least  in  the  spiritual  sphere,  with- 
out remainder.     That  is  perfectionism. 

With  the  leaven  of  perfectionism  already  working  among 
the  students  and  preaching  of  this  character  proceeding 
with  ever  increasing  insistence,  the  end  might  easily  have 
been  foreseen.  During  the  autumn  of  1836  a  series  of  re- 
vival meetings  were  held  at  Oberlin,  by  which  the  whole 
community,  citizens  and  students,  was  profoundly  moved. 
At  most  of  these  Mahan  was  the  preacher;  and  at  one  of 
them,  held  just  after  the  close  of  the  academic  session,  he 
preached  a  powerful  sermon,  enforcing  with  great  urgency 

133  Biblical  Repertory,  October  1840,  p.  425-6. 


54  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

the  topic  now  always  in  his  heart  and  on  his  lips,  the  duty 
of  a  higher  consecration.     A  young  man  in  the  audience, 
just  graduated   from  the  theological  department, — Sereno 
Wright   Streeter   was   his   name,134 — rose   and   asked   with 
solemn  earnestness  that  his  religious  instructors,  Finney  and 
Mahan,  would  tell  him  plainly  to  what  extent  he  might 
hope  to  be  delivered  from  sinning;  whether  he  could  ex- 
pect to  receive  really  entire  sanctification  on  faith.     "When 
we  look  to  Christ  for  sanctification,"  he  asked,135  "what  de- 
gree of  sanctification  may  we  expect  from  Him?    May  we 
look  to  Him  to  be  sanctified  wholly  or  not?"    "I  do  not  re- 
collect that  I  was  ever  so  shocked  and  confounded  at  any 
question  before  or  since,"  says  Mahan.130     "I  felt  for  the 
moment  that  the  work  of  Christ  among  us  would  be  marred, 
and  the  mass  of  minds  around  us  rush  into  Perfectionism." 
An  answer,  definite  and  decided,  could  not  be  avoided ;  but 
it  could  be  postponed — especially  as  the  end  of  the  session 
had  arrived  which  brought  with  it  the  time  for  the  scat- 
tering of  both  teachers  and  taught.     No  answer  was  at- 
tempted, therefore,  at  the  moment,  but  a  promise  was  given 
that  the  matter  would  be  carefully  canvassed  and  an  answer 
returned  in  due  season. 

Thus  the  Oberlin  teachers  were  compelled  fairly  to  face  the 
question  of  Perfectionism.  They  gave  themselves  diligently 
to  its  solution.  Finney  was  accustomed  at  this  time  to 
spend  the  winter — vacation-time  at  Oberlin — in  New  York, 
preaching  in  the  "Broadway  Tabernacle."  On  this  occasion 
Mahan  accompanied  him.  They  explored  the  Scriptures 
together;  and,  says  Mahan,137  "after  looking  carefully  at 

184  See  General  Catalogue  of  Oberlin  Seminary,  1898,  sub  nom.  He 
was  graduated  with  the  first  theological  class  that  was  graduated  and 
ordained  at  Oberlin  October   10,   1836. 

135  Mahan,  Christian  Perfection,  p.  188.  The  exact  form  of  the  ques- 
tion is  given  differently  in  the  various  reports,  but  the  substance  always 
remains  the  same.  Cf.  Mahan's  Autobiography,  p.  323;  Fairchild,  as 
cited,  pp.  239  f . ;  Wright,  Life  of  Finney,  p.  204 ;  Leonard,  as  cited,  pp. 
236  ff. 

189  Christian  Perfection,  p.  188. 

187  Christian  Perfection,  p.  189. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  55 

the  testimony  of  Scripture,  in  respect  to  the  provisions  and 
promises  of  divine  grace,  we  were  constrained  to  admit,  that 
but  one  answer  to  the  above  question  could  be  given  from 
the  Bible ;  and  the  greatest  wonder  to  me  is,  that  I  have  been 
a  'master  of  Israel'  and  have  never  before  'known  these 
things.'  "  But  they  did  not  confine  themselves  to  the  appeal 
to  Scripture.  They  sought  guidance  also  from  those  who 
had  been  perfectionists  before  them.  It  was  naturally  on 
the  Methodists  that  their  glance  was  first  cast  and  lingered 
longest — for  were  not  the  Methodists  the  type  of  evangelical 
perfectionists?  Finney  found  their  idea  of  sanctification 
unacceptable,  because  it  seemed  to  him  "to  relate  almost 
entirely  to  states  of  sensibility,"  and  he  elsewhere138  de- 
clares with  decision  that  their  notion  that  less  is  required 
of  us  under  the  Gospel  than  was  required  under  the  law 
is  inadmissible.  Nevertheless,  he  pronounced  Wesley's 
Plain  Account  of  Christian  Perfection — the  acquaintance 
of  which  he  made  at  this  time — though  marred  by  some  ex- 
pressions (he  thinks  merely  expressions)  to  which  he  should 
object,  "an  admirable  book,"  which  he  wishes  every  member 
of  his  church  would  read.139  By  the  side  of  Wesley's 
Christian  Perfection  he  places  the  Memoirs  of  James  Brain- 
erd  Taylor — which  he  also  hopes  "every  Christian  will  get 
and  study."  He  had  read  the  most  of  it  he  says,  "three 
times  within  a  few  months."  This  same  collocation  of  Wes- 
ley and  Taylor  meets  us  also  incidentally  in  a  passage  of 
Mahan's:  he  speaks  of  "such  men  as  John  Wesley  and 
James  B.  Taylor,  who  believed  that  by  the  grace  of  Christ 
applied  to  'cleanse  them  from  all  sin,'  they  had  'been  made 
perfect  in  love.'  " 

What  is  odd  about  this  is  that  it  was  just  these  two  books 
which  John  Humphrey  Noyes  read  in  the  autumn  of  1834 
— two  years  earlier — when  he  was  making  his  way  also 
to  perfectionism.  And  Finney  repeats  the  same  gossip 
which  Noyes  repeats,  to  the  effect  that  Taylor's  biographers 


138  Memoirs,    p.    340. 

139  Lectures  to  Professing  Christians,  ed.  1880,  pp.  358  f . 


56  THE   PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

had  suppressed  the  most  perfectionistic  passages  in  his 
letters.  We  have  seen  that  perfectionism  did  not  show  itself 
among  the  students  of  Oberlin  apart  from  influences  derived 
from  the  earlier  perfectionism  of  New  York,  or  apart 
specifically  from  the  teachings  of  J.  H.  Noyes.  It  was  much 
more  a  matter  of  course  that  Finney  and  Mahan  did  not 
arrive  at  their  perfectionism  in  ignorance  of  these  prior 
movements.  We  are  scarcely  prepared,  however,  for  the 
emphasis  which  they  seem  to  place  on  their  knowledge  of 
them;  or  for  what  seems  very  much  like  a  tendency  to 
apologize  in  part  at  least  for  them.  "I  have  read  their  pub- 
lications," says  Finney,140  "I  have  had  some  knowledge  of 
them  as  individuals."  He  cannot  give  assent  to  "many  of 
their  views";  he  repudiates  the  imputation  to  him  of  their 
"peculiarities;"  especially  he  turns  with  reprobation  from 
their  "antinomianism."  But  he  adds  at  once  that  they  are 
not  all  antinomians, — "some  of  their  leading  men"  are 
not;  and  although  "there  are  still  a  number  of  important 
points  of  difference  between  them  and  the  orthodox  church," 
the  points  of  agreement  are  very  numerous.141  Similarly 
Mahan  sees  in  all  the  perfectionist  movements  of  the  recent 
past  a  divine  preparation  for  what  was  to  come  in  them; 
and  adopting  them,  along  with  the  Methodists,  as  their  own, 
adds:142  "Some  outside  the  Methodist  denomination  had 
'entered  into  rest'  before  we  did."  It  is  not  merely  misery 
that  loves  company ;  and  the  desire  to  discover  precedents 
is  ordinarily  strong  enough  to  lead  us  to  take  them  where 
we  can  find  them.  It  is  meanwhile  clear  enough  that  Fin- 
ney's and  Mahan's  sense  of  solidarity  with  perfectionists 
as  such  was  strong.  It  was  strongest,  of  course,  with  the 
Methodists,  from  whom  they  derived  most — among  other 
things  the  terms  by  which  they  expressed  their  new  doctrine. 
"The  terms  by  which  we  designate  it,"  says  Mahan,143  "were 
those  by  which  it  had  been  presented  since  the  times  of 
"o  P.  346. 

141  ViiWt  of  Sanctification,  1840,  pp.   134  ff- 

142  Out  of  Darkness  into  Light,  1875.  P-   195- 
148  Autobiography,  p.   367. 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  57 

Wesley  and  Fletcher,  namely,  Christian  Perfection,  Entire 
Sanctification,  and  Full  Salvation."  The  thing  expressed 
by  these  terms  they  would  not  admit  they  got  from  the 
Methodists.  What  they  offered  they  got  direct  from  the 
Scriptures, — though  this  affirmation  naturally  can  be  over- 
pressed.  "I  gave  myself  earnestly,"  says  Finney,144  "to 
search  the  Scriptures  and  to  read  whatever  came  to  hand 
upon  the  subject,  until  my  mind  was  satisfied  that  an 
altogether  higher  and  more  stable  form  of  Christian  life 
was  attainable  and  was  the  privilege  of  the  Christian.  .  .  . 
I  was  satisfied  that  the  doctrine  of  sanctification  in  this  life, 
and  entire  sanctification,  in  the  sense  that  it  was  the  privi- 
lege of  Christians  to  live  without  known  sin,  was  a  doctrine 
taught  in  the  Bible,  and  that  abundant  means  are  provided 
for  the  securing  of  that  attainment."  The  doctrine  thus 
described  as  derived  from  the  Scriptures  has  in  any  case 
somewhat  close  affinities  with  the  Methodist  doctrine.145 

No  sooner  was  the  Oberlin  doctrine  of  perfection  con- 
ceived than  it  was  published.  Finney  was  the  first  to  pub- 
lish it.  He  was  in  New  York  during  the  winter  months  of 
1 836-1 837  for  the  purpose  of  preaching  in  the  "Broadway 
Tabernacle."  Preoccupied  with  the  subject  of  the  Chris- 
tian walk,  he  delivered  to  his  congregation  a  series  of 
Lectures  to  Professing  Christians,  which  were  printed  as 
they  were  delivered  in  the  New  York  Evangelist,  and  soon 
afterward  (1837)  were  gathered  into  a  volume.148  Two 
of  these  lectures  were  devoted  to  the  subject  of  "Christian 
Perfection."  In  this  first  exposition  of  Oberlin  perfection- 
ism there  are  naturally  seen  lying  in  the  background  all 
the  characteristic  traits  of   Finney's  theological   thinking. 

144  Memoirs,  pp.  340  f . 

145  The  Methodist  books  were  very  diligently  read,  not  only  the 
fundamental  treatises  of  Wesley  and  Fletcher,  but  such  biographies  as 
those  of  Hester  Ann  Rogers  and  William  Carvosso  (cf.  J.  S.  Fairchild, 
The  Congregational  Quarterly,  April  1876,  p.  242)  ;  and  the  Methodist 
commentators — particularly  Adam  Clarke — were  very  much  deferred  to 
(cf.  Finney,  Views  of  Sanctification) .  Along  with  them  the  support  of 
other  perfectionists  like  Robert  Barclay,   was  welcomed. 

146  Lectures  to  Professing  Christians  (1837)   Oberlin,  1880. 


58  THE  PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

All  virtue  consists  in  disinterested  benevolence;  nothing  is 
sinful  but  voluntary  action;  we  have  no  obligation  beyond 
our  ability — we  can  do  all  that  we  ought  to  do,  and  what, 
for  any  reason  whatever,  we  cannot  do,  we  no  longer,  in 
any  sense  whatever,  ought  to  do :  it  is  such  conceptions  as 
these  which  form  the  substructure.  On  this  basis  a  per- 
fectionism is  developed  which  already  bears  the  fundamental 
character  that  ever  afterwards  marked  the  Oberlin  doctrine. 
What  is  taught  is  a  perfection  that  consists  in  complete 
righteousness,  but  in  righteousness  which  is  adjusted  to 
fluctuating  ability.  Enoch  Pond,  in  reviewing  the  lectures, 
rejoices  to  find  that  the  perfection  taught — in  contrast  with 
the  Wesleyan  doctrine  of  a  so-called  "evangelical  perfec- 
tion"— requires  the  perfect  fulfilment  of  the  law  of  God.147 
But,  as  W.  E.  Boardman — discriminating  later  the  "Ober- 
linian"  from  the  Wesleyan  doctrine — points  out,  what  is 
really  distinctive  of  "Oberlinian"  perfection  is  the  "view 
of  the  claims  of  the  law  as  graduated  to  the  sinner's 
ability."148  This  teaching  is  already  here.  But  the  more 
fundamental  idea  that  perfection  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  law 
is  more  dwelt  upon.  The  lectures  are  thus  given  the 
aspect  of  insisting  on  perfect  righteousness,  and  point  is 
given  to  this  insistence  by  an  open  polemic  against  the 
Wesleyan  conception.  "No  part  of  the  obligation  of  the 
law  is  discharged,"  it  is  said:149  "the  Gospel  holds  those 
under  it  to  the  same  holiness  as  those  under  the  law."  The 
definition  of  Christian  Perfection  is  given  crisply  as  "per- 
fect obedience  to  the  law  of  God;"  and  this  is  explained 
as  requiring  that  "we  should  do  neither  more  nor  less  than 
the  law  of  God  prescribes."  "This,"  it  is  added,150  "is  being, 
morally,  just  as  perfect  as  God." 

When  Finney  undertakes  to  show  that  this  perfection  is 
attainable  in  this  life,  his  argument  runs  on  the  familiar 

147  The  Biblical  Repository,  January  1839,  pp.  44  ff. 

148  The  Higher  Christian  Life,  1859,  p.  41. 

140  p      342 

100  P.  34i- 


OBERLIN    PERFECTIONISM  59 

lines.151  He  pleads  that  God  wills  our  perfection;  that  all 
the  promises  and  prophecies  of  God  respecting  our  sanc- 
tification  have  perfect  sanctification  in  view ;  that  this  is 
the  great  blessing  promised  throughout  the  Bible ;  and  the 
very  object  for  which  the  Holy  Spirit  is  given.  Every  one 
of  these  propositions  is  true;  and  none  of  them  is  to  the 
point.  The  whole  point  at  issue  concerns  the  process  by 
which  the  believer  is  made  perfect;  or  perhaps  we  would 
better  say,  whether  it  is  by  a  process  that  he  is  made  perfect. 
Avoiding  the  hinge  of  the  argument,  Finney  endeavors  to 
impale  his  readers  on  dilemmas.  "If  it  is  not  a  practicable 
duty  to  be  perfectly  holy  in  this  world,  then  it  will  follow 
that  the  devil  has  so  completely  accomplished  his  design  of 
corrupting  mankind,  that  Jesus  Christ  is  at  fault,  and  has 
no  way  to  sanctify  His  people  but  by  taking  them  out  of 
the  world."  "If  perfect  sanctification  is  not  attainable  in 
this  world  it  must  be  either  from  a  want  of  motives  in  the 
Gospel,  or  a  want  of  sufficient  power  in  the  Spirit  of  God." 
It  would  be  a  poor  reader  indeed  who  did  not  perceive  at 
once  that  such  dilemnas  could  be  applied  equally  to  every 
evil  with  which  man  is  afflicted — disease,  death,  the  un- 
completed salvation  of  the  world.  If  it  is  not  a  practicable 
thing  to  be  perfectly  well  in  this  world,  then  Jesus  Christ 
has  been  vanquished  by  the  Devil  and  has  no  way  to  make 
His  people  well  except  by  taking  them  out  of  the  world. 
If  freedom  from  death  is  not  attainable  in  this  world, 
then  it  must  be  due  to  want  of  sufficient  power  in  the  Spirit 
of  God.  If  the  world  does  not  become  at  once  the  pure 
Kingdom  of  God  in  which  only  righteousness  dwells,  then 
we  must  infer  either  a  want  of  sufficient  motives  in  the  Gos- 
pel or  a  want  of  sufficient  power  in  the  Son  of  God.  There 
have  been  people  who  reasoned  thus:  the  point  of  interest 
now  is,  that  it  was  not  otherwise  that  Finney  reasoned — 
and  that  accounts  for  many  things  besides  his  perfectionism. 
It  is  a  simple  matter  of  fact  that  the  effects  of  redemption, 
in  the  individual  and  in  the  world  at  large,  are  realized,  not 

181  Pp.  346  ff. 


60  THE   PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  REVIEW 

all  at  once,  but  through  a  long  process :  and  that  their  com- 
plete enjoyment  lies  only  "at  the  end." 

A  certain  lack  of  logical  coherence  is  discernable  in  other 
features  of  these  lectures  also.  Finney  was  too  good  a 
Pelagian  readily  to  homologate  Quietistic  conceptions:  it  is 
not  for  the  Pelagian  to  say,  "Cast  thy  dreadful  doing 
down :"  doing  is  with  him  rather  the  beginning,  and  middle, 
and  end  of  all  things.  Yet  we  have  already  seen  Mahan 
imbuing  him  with  his  newly-found  notion  (borrowed 
ultimately  from  the  Wesleyans)  that  sanctification  is  to  be 
attained  immediately  by  an  act  of  faith,  and  indeed  also 
with  his  mystical  Quietistic  explanation  of  how  this  sanctifi- 
cation is  brought  about  by  faith.  We  noted  at  the  time  that 
it  was  interesting  to  observe  this,  and  the  interest  seems  to 
us  to  be  enhanced  when  we  observe  the  doctrine  enunciated 
— so  far  as  it  is  enunciated — in  the  context  of  these  lectures. 
Finney  the  Pelagian  denies  that  Christ  in  His  Spirit  can 
work  on  man  otherwise  than  by  bringing  motives  to  action 
to  bear  on  him — in  a  word  by  persuading  him  himself  to 
act.  Whatever  man  does,  then,  in  the  way  of  obeying  the 
law — perfect  obedience  to  which  constitutes  his  perfection 
— he  must  himself  do:  it  cannot  be  done  for  him  or  in  him 
or  through  him  by  another;  no  other  can  affect  him  other- 
wise than  by  presenting  motives  to  action  to  him.  We 
should  like  to  know  then  exactly  what  Finney  means  when 
he  rebukes  those  who  seek  sanctification  "by  their  own 
resolutions  and  works,  their  feelings  and  prayers,  their  en- 
deavors and  activity,  instead  of  taking  right  hold  of  Christ 
by  faith,  for  sanctification,  as  they  do  for  justification."152. 
What  he  says  is  that  we  may — must — attain  to  sanctifica- 
tion— or,  as  entire  sanctification  is  meant,  to  perfection, 
that  perfection  which  is  perfect  obedience  to  the  law  of 
God — immediately  by  an  act  of  faith,  without  any  resolu- 
tion or  effort  on  our  part  to  obey  the  law,  or  apparently, 
any  activity  on  our  part  in  obeying  it.  "Faith,"  he  says, 
"will  bring  Christ  right  into  the  soul  and  fill  it  with  the 

102  P.  362. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  6l 

same  spirit" — note  the  small  s — "that  breathes  through 
Himself/'  We  greately  wonder  how  "faith"  does  all  this, 
and  note  only  that  it  is  faith  that  does  it,  not  Christ :  Christ 
supplies  only  the  model  to  which  faith  conforms  us.  For 
light  on  this  dark  question,  however,  we  shall  have  to  go 
elsewhere. 

Finney's  inconcinity  is  not  occasional  merely  but  con- 
stant. Take  another  instance.163  He  is  arguing  that  the 
power  of  habit  need  not  inhibit  perfection,  since  it  does  not 
inhibit  conversion.  The  power  of  habit  is  a  thing  that  may 
be  overcome.  As  he  argues  this  point,  however,  he  raises 
in  our  minds  a  previous  question — the  question  whether 
God  can  save  at  all.  The  answer  he  supplies  is  Yes,  some- 
times; and  sometimes,  no — at  least  "consistently  with  His 
wisdom,"  a  phrase  which  does  not  vacate  but  only  locates 
His  inability.  Of  man  in  his  natural  state  we  must  recog- 
nize, he  says,  that  "selfishness  has  the  entire  control  of  the 
mind,  and  the  habits  of  sin  are  wholly  unbroken."  And 
this  condition  of  course  presents  an  obstacle  to  salvation — 
an  obstacle,  he  says,  "so  great,  in  all  cases,  that  no  power 
but  that  of  the  Holy  Ghost  can  overcome  it."  It  is  indeed, 
he  adds,  "so  great  in  many  instances,  that  God  Himself  can- 
not, consistently  with  His  wisdom,  use  the  means  necessary 
to  convert  the  soul."  Men  then,  it  seems,  may  be  so  set  in 
their  wickedness  that  no  "power" — the  term  is  misleading; 
God  uses  no  power  in  the  transaction  except  the  power  of 
persuasion — which  God,  being  wise,  is  willing  to  use  upon 
them  will  avail  for  their  salvation.  Finney  says  this  is  the 
actual  case  "in  many  instances."  These  men,  clearly,  then, 
are  unsalvable.  God,  so  long  as  he  remains  the  wise  God, 
cannot  save  men  so  sunk  in  sin.  We  have  thus  reached 
the  astonishing  conclusion  that  men  may  be  too  sinful  to 
be  saved.  They  are  saved,  or  they  are  not  saved,  accord- 
ing to  their  determination  in  sin.  Moderately  sinful  souls 
can  be  saved,  very  sinful  souls  are  beyond  the  possibilities 
of  salvation.    This  no  doubt  is  good  Pelagian  doctrine :  it  is 


153  P.  283. 


62  THE   PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL   REVIEW 

not  Paul's  doctrine  or  Christ's.  We  are  surprised  to  find 
it  here  where  Finney  had  started  out  to  prove  that  evil 
habits  cannot  inhibit  the  attainment  of  perfection,  because 
they  do  not  inhibit  the  attainment  of  conversion.  We  have 
ended  by  proving  that  "in  many  instances"  they  can  and 
do  inhibit  the  attainment  of  conversion;  and  that,  whether 
we  are  converted  or  not  does  not  depend  therefore  on 
God  who  in  many  cases  is  helpless  in  the  face  of  our  sin- 
fulness, but  on  the  degree  of  our  sinfulness. 

In  his  Lectures  on  Systematic  Theology,™*  Finney  makes 
the  following  remarks  concerning  the  lectures  we  have  been 
considering.  "These  lectures  were  soon  spread  before  thou- 
sands of  readers.  Whatever  was  thought  of  them,  I  heard 
not  a  word  of  objection  from  any  quarter.  If  any  was 
made,  it  did  not,  to  my  recollection,  come  to  my  knowl- 
edge." He  is  often  inexact  in  his  historical  statements; 
and  perhaps  we  should  not  wonder  that  he  is  inexact  here 
too.  In  point  of  fact  the  lectures  received  the  normal  atten- 
tion of  reviewers;  and  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  stric- 
tures made  on  them  were  not  at  the  time  brought  to  the 
author's  attention.  The  Christian  Spectator,  the  organ  of 
Finney's  own  party,  gives  them,  it  is  true,  only  passing 
mention.  But  this  passing  mention  is  not  without  its  sig- 
nificance. Its  object  is  apparently  to  read  Finney  a  lecture, 
as  the  enfant  terrible  of  the  "New  Divinity''  party,  and  to 
serve  notice  on  him  that  he  was  expected  to  keep  within  the 
bounds  and  to  content  himself  with  repeating  the  shib- 
boleths appointed  for  him.  "On  the  subject  of  Christian 
Perfection"  we  read,155  "we  think  Mr.  Finney  is  not  always 
sufficiently  guarded,  and  though  we  do  not  believe  he  means 
anything  more  than  we  should  fully  admit, — the  possibility 
and  duty  of  obedience  to  God  in  all  things  commanded — 
yet  we  fear  he  may  be  liable  to  misconstruction  and  injure 
the  consciences  of  many  weak  but  pious  persons."  The 
note  of  irritation  here  is  unmistakable:  in  the  sequence  of 


1B*Ed.  I,  vol.  ii,  1847,  P    170;  ed.  2,  1851,  p.  571. 
155  Christian  Spectator,  June  1837,  p.  342. 


OBERLIN   PERFECTIONISM  63 

obligation,  ability,  actualization,  could  not  Finney,  like  the 
rest  of  them,  be  satisfied  with  the  first  two  without  pushing 
on  inconsiderately  to  the  third?  So  far  then  from  there 
having  been  no  word  of  objection  to  the  teaching  of  the 
lectures  spoken  from  any  quarter,  they  were  objected  to 
from  all  quarters.  And,  naturally,  the  reviewers  "from 
the  other  side"  did  not  content  themselves  with  passing 
mention  but  subjected  them  to  reasoned  criticism.  This 
was  done,  for  example,  by  Joseph  Ives  Foot  in  a  trenchant 
article  in  the  Literary  and  Theological  Review?™  which 
was  given  the  uncompromising  title  of  "Influence  of 
Pelagianism  on  the  Theological  Course  of  Rev.  C.  G. 
Finney,  developed  in  his  Sermons  and  Lectures."  It  was 
done  also  by  Enoch  Pond  in  a  prudent  article  published  in 
The  Biblical  Repository.1*1  And  although  it  was  not  done 
in  a  subsequent  article  on  current  works  on  Perfectionism 
published  in  the  same  journal  by  N.  S.  Folsom,158  it  was 
made  plain  that  that  was  only  because  the  writer  considered 
that  it  had  been  already  sufficiently  done  by  Pond.  Pond  as 
a  good  New  Englander  goes  so  far  with  Finney  that  he  is 
glad  to  allow  "the  attainableness"  of  perfection  by  the 
Christian,  or,  as  he  phrases  it,  "its  metaphysical  attainable- 
ness;" but  like  the  Christian  Spectator  he  wishes  to  stop 
right  there  and  deny  that  it  is  ever  "attained  actually."  On 
the  ground  of  the  current  New  England  doctrine,  which 
postulated  "natural  ability"  for  all  that  can  be  required, 
the  whole  question  reduced  itself  thus  for  him  to  one  of 
mere  fact,  and  he  argues  it  on  that  understanding. 
Princeton.  B.  B.  Warfield. 


156  March  1838,  pp.  38  ff.     See  particularly  pp.  52  fif. 

157  January  1839,  PP.  44  ff. 
168  July  1839,  p.  143- 


